


One Person's Craziness Is Another Person's Reality

by JJQuinn



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: All Human, Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Budding Love, Dark Humor, Dark Past, Drama, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Friendship, Humor, Intially humor but gets a lot darker, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Past Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Quoting Tina Fey, Romance, Sarcasm, sucide attempts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-13 05:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 73,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5696755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJQuinn/pseuds/JJQuinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damon, Stefan, Klaus, Kol, Rebekah, Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, Hayley, Tyler, and Enzo and eventually Kai. Twelve mismatched, screwed up people who are smashed together to create one of the most dysfunctional groups in the Augustine Center. They're all more fragile than they know.</p><p>Bad things happen. They always do. But when you're somewhere where you are meant to be healing, breaking is the exact opposite of what you expect, yet it happens. And it happens. Over and over. They're not safe. </p><p>The twelve of them, the brothers and sisters, friends and enemies, become entwined together and move closer and closer to one another than any of them even wanted. They don't have a choice, though, because while their world is absolutely crazy to those on the outside, the ones who can't and won't help, it's their reality. And they have to survive it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. DysFUNction

**Author's Note:**

> ON A SERIOUS NOTE: Any of the topics and illnesses portrayed below are in no way meant to cause offense or make light of mental issues. In some cases they are caricatures, and as a result of this medical inaccuracies may occur and I take full responsibility for them. Despite my best intentions, I apologize if anything I have written upsets anyone.
> 
> Credit: The title is a quote by Tim Burton.

He remained standing as everyone else sat themselves down in the circle. He looked down to the list of names and joining information of his patients. Twelve names. One of the smallest groups. But he didn't mind, in fact, that was exactly what he needed. He thought that starting off in one of the oldest institutions in the state would mean that he would get a massive group, but oldest didn't necessarily mean biggest, and he was thankful for that. Noticing there was one empty seat, and only eleven people, he frowned slightly, but decided to continue on.

"Hello everyone, welcome to the Augustine Center. My name it Matt, and I will be your over viewer and group therapist. I'm looking forward to what's ahead, but before we get any further, I would like to learn a little bit about you all from you yourselves. Please, tell me your names, ages, why you are here, and your past experiences in any other places."

The first girl beside him stood. "Hi, I'm Elena Gilbert, I'm 20 years old, and I have bipolar disorder. I was at the last place for a few years, but it was getting over crowded and I wasn't getting any better, and I transferred here." Her long chestnut hair flowed easily over her shoulders, and she smiled ruefully as she spoke, adding a certain charm to her words. Matt noted down, _'Elena Gilbert – pleasant enough, maybe slightly shallow, but appeasing'._

"Hello darlings, I'll keep this short. I'm Kol, Kol Mikaelson, I am 21 years of age, and I have what some people consider to be some sort of narcissism disorder or something. I don't know about the truthfulness of this, I mean, my mother always told me to be confident in myself, so that's what I am! But apparently these kinds of things run in the family. My parents put me here after they discovered they themselves couldn't curb my intense love for myself, I see no reason why they would want to, but I've decided I shan't care, as Tina Fey said, 'Do your thing and don't care if they like it'." With a final smirk, he sat back down; his legs casually sprawled out in front of him.

A man with blonde wavy hair, and a cynical expression stood. "I'm Niklaus, Klaus, Mikaelson. I am 24 years old. Yes, I am related to that unfortunate specimen beside me. I have borderline personality disorder. When Kol was moved here, my parents decided it would be a good idea to shove me into this dark, dark hole of a place to live out my days and suffer for all -"

"Okay, thank you Klaus," Matt interrupted calmly. "Why don't we just get through all the introductions? I just want to put names to faces and such. Then we can get into further detail." ' _Niklaus Mikaelson – dark and holds resentment against his family'._

Klaus sat back down, shooting a sullen glance at the therapist. The raven haired and sharp eyed guy beside him stood, his arms crossed tightly in front of him, his eyes darting around the room, suspicious and accusing. "I'm Tyler. I'm 20 years old. I'm meant to have intermittent explosive disorder. This is the first-"

"-That's a lot of words." Kol rudely yelled out, cutting Tyler off mid sentence. A red flush of rage overtook Tyler's face as he looked to Kol. "I've never heard of that before. Why don't you tell us what interkitten exploding syndrome is?"

"It's intermittent explosive disorder you arrogant fuckwit." Tyler hissed in a strained voice between his teeth. "Don't fucking-"

"-Oh, you don't need to carry on, I think we get the message." Kol replied happily, oblivious or uncaring towards Tyler.

His face twitching and his nails digging into his fore arm, Tyler continued. "This is the first place I have been to." He abruptly sat down. ' _Tyler Lockwood – doesn't take interruptions well, sailors mouth, take extreme caution in speaking to'._

"Before the next person introduces themselves, why don't we make a 'no interruptions rule'? Lets respect everyone, okay?" Matt once again suggested to the circle, although his look mainly focusing on a still unmindful Kol, his best placatory voice on. Everyone nodded.

"I'm Caroline. I'm 19 years old and I kind of have bulimia. I was in a clinic outside of town for 3 years, but my mom wanted me closer to home, so when more spots opened up here, we thought, 'why not'? So, yeah, that's me." Caroline chirped, fiddling with her platinum blonde waves in one hand, a genuine looking smile was plastered on her face. ' _Caroline Forbes – appears to be in the correct mindset to recover, very optimistic'._

The man with jet-black hair and piercing cyan eyes rose. "I'm Damon. I have narcissistic personality disorder. I'm 23 years old. This is the first place I've been to which, you know, isn't really a shock because _I don't need mental help_. But anyway, I'll also introduce you to my brother, you see, he's a bit sleepy, especially today, his head just keeps bobbing down with his larger-than-life hair-"

"-Damon, why don't we let your brother introduce us himself, I'd rather hear it from his perspective." Matt motioned for him to sit down, but Damon just stared back with an astonished expression painting his face.

"What happened to 'no interruptions' Doc?" His voice was the epitome of bewilderment. "Stefan can hardly hear through the gel in his hair and I just trying to help-"

"-Damon, sit down, I can introduce myself." A deep voice peaked.

Looking back at the man who had just spoken, Damon held his hands up in appeasement.

"I'm Stefan, I'm 20, I have had insomnia since I was 11. Since then I have only managed a few hours of sleep a night and was prone to violent outbursts and other things. I have been institutionalized since I was 17." His green eyes were weighted with dark purple rings beneath them, and he had thick tousled hair. He blinked heavily.

"Thank you Stefan." Matt, still being only young and a new therapist in training replied with relief in his voice over the avoided spat. ' _Stefan Salvatore – immune to brother's annoyances, able to control him slightly, seems cooperative'._

"I'm Rebekah Mikaelson-"

"-JESUS CHRIST ANOTHER ONE?" Damon yelled out.

"And I have histrionic personality disorder." Rebekah carried on, ignoring Damon, clearly used to her narcissistic brother Kol. She spoke not slowly, but deliberately, as if she was building up to something. "I am 19 years old. I was born in in this country, in the Hamptons in New York, but unfortunately, I never got to see much of the beach, as I grew up in chains..." She paused dramatically. "I have been locked up in the basement of a mental asylum by my family since the day I was born."

"What the fuck?"

"We prefer not to call them asylums."

"Oh god."

"I knew this family was bat shit crazy."

Caroline's exclamation, Matt's correction, Elena's sigh, and Damon's summary all played out over each other in reaction to Rebekah's revelation.

"Please everyone, pipe down." Klaus randomly called out. They all looked to him. "Rebekah has a bit of a flair for the dramatics. Please let me assure you, she has not been in an, as she calls it, 'mental asylum' since she was born."

"Well it has bloody well felt like it!" Rebekah cried out, tears in her eyes but her nostrils flaring angrily.

But Klaus rolled his eyes. "Rebekah is implying that us as a family, and my especially as her brother, has kept her on lock down, but we have not had her chained up since she was born. We are just protective of our own."

"You have suppressed me my whole life! I have never been able to do anything fun or be with anyone because of you!" She replied, her voice thick with emotion over the injustice of her life.

"Okay, Bekah, we get it. Can't have boyfriends, life is sad." Kol joined the conversation. "Just in case anyone was wondering, she had been in a mental hospital for a year, was released, tried to elope at 17, eluded her family for two years, was found in some loser town called Mystic Falls where she was in a rather troubling situation, which we saved her from as usual, then readmitted in the neighboring mental 'center', now with the rest of her siblings-"

"-Not Elijah and Finn." Klaus said grudgingly.

"Yeah, so anyway, thanks Rebekah," Kol shot his sister a sharp glance. "Anyway, can we get on with this? I'm famished."

Matt quickly noted down ' _Mikaelson family highly dysfunctional'_ upon his note board, and looked up to see the next person introduce them self.

"I'm Enzo, I am 23 years old, I have never been to any sort of place like this in the past. I have been 'diagnosed' with major depression. I seriously doubt that any time with you lot will help with this diagnosis." Enzo seated himself, crossing his arms and staring sourly at the clock. ' _Lorenzo St. Claire – depressive, dislikes other patients, doesn't think anything will help'._

"Cough, douchebag, cough." Damon feigned loudly.

"Cough, cocky egotistical arsehole whose brother probably hates him, cough." Enzo replied, without blinking. Damon shut his mouth. Stefan chuckled.

A small brunette with striking green eyes and a bored expression on her face stood. "I'm Hayley. I'm 18 years old. I'm meant to have 'passive-aggressive personality disorder'. I'm not here to talk about my feelings. I'm here because I have to be, so just know I'm outta this place in 6 months." She sat down and crossed her arms.

"Okay, well you can just talk when you're ready." Matt said assuredly. Causing Hayley to scoff and roll her eyes as a reply.

The last girl stood up, she had bronzed skin, deep emerald eyes, she was biting her lip, and her body posture was closed up and timid, but her faced showed another story, and she looked determined for what was ahead. "I'm Bonnie. I'm 21 years old. I have PTSD. This is the first place I have been to." And she sat. ' _Bonnie Bennett – appears conflicted in how she feels, fearful yet strong willed.'_

Well, that was everyone. Matt glanced around the circle to all the different faces. He smiled. They were difficult, but he was excited to try and help them all get better, that was his favorite thing about what he was trying to achieve, just helping people feel like they deserve to feel.

He grinned at them. "Well, that's everyone, I'm glad to meet you all-"

"Mr. Donovan, could I please just speak to you for a moment." Dr. Maxfield poked his head around the door, a smile on his face overshadowed by the grave look in his eyes. Matt felt an uneasy stirring in the pit of his stomach as he approached his boss. So when Dr. Maxfield whispered those dreaded words into Matt's ears and shoved the documents in his hands, it was no shock that he felt his heart droop and his eyebrows sink in stress.

The patients sat quietly, the quietest they had been since the beginning.

"He will be here any moment now."

Matt swallowed. "Doctor, with all due respect, but are you sure _I_ am really the right person to send him to. I mean… I hardly have any qualifications…"

"That's because you are going to learn practically Donovan. This is exactly the kind of thing you asked for." His voice was ominous and unforgiving. Something on his waistband buzzed. "He's arrived."

Matt returned to his seat as the Doctor hurried off to retrieve the patient.

They were all silent for a moment, staring at Matt expectantly.

Damon cleared his throat. "So…" He started awkwardly. "Well if no one's going to ask, I will. What the hell was-"

Everyone's heads jerked up towards the double doors that swung open. Two white dressed nurses held a tall man by his shoulders and led him in towards the empty seat. The man, well he looked no more than ordinary, thick dark hair, fair skin, stormy grey eyes, and an unreadable expression on his face. The only thing that was truly striking about him was that he was dressed in a straitjacket, and accompanied by two nurses who didn't seem to be leaving any time soon. The minute Matt saw the new patient, the uneasy stirring in his stomach turned into a thunderstorm, and he could tell that there just was something extremely _wrong_ with the particular patient, more so than the others.

They were all silent again, most staring at the new patient in horror over his restraints and security. Who the hell was this guy?

Matt could hear the blood pumping in his ears. He could hear his breath louder than any other sound in that moment. He could smell the sterilized clean air suddenly turn stagnant and suffocating. The tense bodies of the other patients seized up and around him.

They all stared at him.

The new patient.

But he took no notice.

"Aw, come on, Marcel, Genevieve- Gen, can I call you that?" The patient suddenly burst out, looking from side to side to his accompanying nurses.

They ignored him.

"Is the bondage really _necessary_? I mean," He wiggled around awkwardly in his seat, unmindful to the other patient's stares. "I can barely move-"

"That's kind of the point man." The tall muscly nurse spoke up with a bored expression in his voice, not even bothering to glance down.

The patient looked at him, sheepishly smiling. "But we bonded Marcel, we really did. You too Gen." They snubbed him. He huffed. "Oh my god, so dramatic guys, it's not like I'm going to get up and suffocate my fellow patients. I'm here to get better too guys. At least treat me like an equal."

The nurses shared uneasy looks between them as the patient batted his eyelashes. The redheaded nurse Gen eventually shrugged and unbuckled the patient out of the restrains. He sighed heavily, rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck and back, and smiled at her.

"I knew you were my favorite. Thanks Gen." He cooed.

She just sneered.

He turned his head and glanced over all of his fellow patients, his eyes blank, but lingering just towards the end, until they snapped back towards the therapist. He smiled broadly and widened his eyes, making his face look almost comical.

"Um," Matt started, coughing awkwardly, the other patients, including the uncharacteristically silent Kol and Damon, just watched. He had briefly read the patients information on the documents in front of him, and it wasn't good. "So, why don't you try introducing yourself to us. Your name, age, why you're here, and where you've been before?"

The patient nodded knowingly. "I got you."

He went to stand, but the nurses behind him clamped down on his shoulders, jerking him back to his seat. "No standing." The female hissed.

But the patient rolled his eyes. "Anyways, hi everyone, I was just recently transferred from a small town on the border of Washington state and Oregon, so I'm a long way from home. I was previously in a, as they like to call it 'recovery center' for almost seven years before I was transferred here. Or referred here, whatever you like to call it." His statements were vague and confusing and he wasn't making sense.

Matt swallowed. "Okay, that's interesting to know, why don't you tell us your name, age, and why you're here today?"

The patient made a face and turned to Hayley beside him with a _'can you believe this guy?'_ kind of expression on his face. She looked to him uneasily, her tough-girl façade completely gone. He turned back to Matt, his eyebrows raised and a tight smile on his face. "Uhh, I _just told you_ why I'm here today, I was transferred slash referred slash 'banished' here from a small town on the border of Washington state and Oregon." His voice was slow, deliberate, and painful, like he was talking to a child. "But I'm 22 if any of you were wondering."

"Yes, but what I mean by 'tell us why you're here today' is telling us, your mental condition." Matt explained, feeling more and more apprehensive about the patient the more he talked.

"OHHH!" He yelled out, chuckling to himself viciously and sharply. "Why didn't you just say so? God, Matty the therapist, you got to elaborate more often if you want me to understand what you're saying. I'm a very literal person, don't speak to me in metaphors."

Matt felt his heart slowly sink. He never told the patient his name.

"I'm a sociopath."

The air stilled. Everyone felt the oxygen from his or her lungs dissipate as the patient affirmed the simple statement. Matt had never heard anything so, so quiet, it was almost piercing his ears, the silence.

"Predominantly," The patient carried on, heedless. "But apparently that's not a mental illness. I've been diagnosed by hundreds of people, who have said so _many_ things. The main ones though, are; paranoid schizophrenia, panic disorder, anti social personality disorder, physical abuse, borderline personality disorder, you know I once got autism, but, you know, I can look people in the eyes so I don't know what that was about, uh, PTSD, mania, psychosis, blah blah blah. Yeah, so enough about me, what about everyone else?" He paused and glanced around at the room full of dazed faces. "Sorry I came a bit late, but I'm still committed to learning about all of you, so who's up for introductions?" He exclaimed zealously.

"Yes." Was all Matt managed to say. He was still trying to process everything. Matt was young and ignorant. He was new, and he sure as hell had no idea how to deal with that guy.

But no one said anything for a really long moment. Until one person did.

"You never told us your name…" A small timid voice said.

The patient looked at the girl. Something sparked in his eyes, and he smiled loosely. "That I didn't." He replied. "Tell me yours, and I'll tell you mine." He continued, in a hushed voice as though they were the only ones in the room.

"I'm Bonnie."

"Hi Bonnie. I'm Kai." He bit back a smile. "Why are you here today?"

Bonnie chewed upon the rubbery words in her mouth. "I have PTSD." She leaned forward in her seat. "Why do you think you're a sociopath?"

At that question, Matt knew he should've intervened.

Kai frowned, his blank eyes lying only upon her, everyone else was nonexistent.

"Why don't you try and guess?"

Bonnie licked her lips. "You think yourself to be a bad guy, an…. Antagonist. I think… you've done something bad, really bad. And you regret it. Regret the effect it has had on people, the effect it has had on you. The hurt. It's been a negative effect, and you've changed, and become desensitized to the world around you, and so you think that you actually feel nothing. But you don't. You feel regret, and have tried to block everything else away that came with it."

He breathed a grin. "Oh Bonnie, why, you're so, so wrong. It's the complete opposite." His smile dropped. "I don't regret it at all."

Panicking, Matt spoke up before Kai could continue. "OKAY EVERYONE!" All the patients but Kai, who kept his eyes trained on Bonnie, turned to Matt with startled expressions. "I think that's enough for today. Um, let me just-" He started rifling through the papers on his clipboard, eventually finding what he was looking for. "These are your assigned rooms, Caroline, Bonnie, and Hayley, will be rooming together in dorm 108. Rebekah, and Elena, you will be in dorm 109. Tyler, and Kol, you will be in dorm 210. Stefan, and Klaus, you will be in dorm 211. Damon, and Enzo, you will be in dorm 212. Kai, you will be alone upon recommendation in dorm 213."

Hayley, Rebekah, Tyler, and Damon, all let out muffled curses.

Matt ignored them. "I hope you all settle in easily enough. Free time today will be from 1 pm to 5 pm in the recreational room. Attendants outside will show you your dorms and your belongings and other amenities will be waiting in your rooms." Matt strained a smile. "I look forward to the time we will all spend together."

They all but ran out of there, probably excited to get away from each other.

After hearing from all twelve of his new patients, Matt was glad the group therapy session was over. On his clipboard, he looked down at some of the more prominent notes he had made;  
- _Kol Mikaelson – thinks his narcissism is self-love, quotes Tina Fey_  
- _Damon Salvatore – sarcastic, cynical, fixated with brother's hair_  
_-Rebekah Mikaelson – vies for attention (possible former child neglect?), hopeless romantic, begrudges family_  
_~Mikaelson family highly dysfunctional~_  
_-Hayley Marshall – denies want for help, present due to court order?_  
_-Malachai Parker – thinks straitjacket is bondage, superficial friendliness, avoids questions, slightly sinister, thinks he has 8 mental illnesses, thinks he is a sociopath, has no regret over past actions_

Sighing, Matt thought that maybe Falls Mental Recovery Center wouldn't all be recovery, and added, ' _Eventual dysfunction certain throughout group_ '.

He laughed to himself as he thought of a sarcastic pun; 'This group puts the fun in dysFUNction'.

Maybe Matt needed to check himself in there, or at least, at the end of the whole thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever just laugh at yourself and think "Damn I should be a comedian", and then wonder if you actually are as hilarious as you think you are, or if it's just you? Well that's me now. It's not that I find writing humor hard, it's just I find it hard to tell whether or not what I'm writing is actually funny to anyone but me. So right now, I'm apprehensive to see what people actually think, and I now understand why all those film critics and actors talk about how much harder humor is to do in comparison to, like, drama or something. Although I'm not an actor or a film critic, but I still think what they say applies. Any way, I'm rambling.
> 
> Please review and tell me what you think, appraisals, criticisms, questions, tell me if I should carry on or just quit attempting comedy for the rest of my life. I would consider editing the story and taking the 'humor' out of it if it's not too popular, thus making it a drama/angsty fic? I'm pretty able at angst and that kind of stuff. Or you know, just kudos if you think I did a good job. Thanks for reading! X
> 
> (I have no beta therefore sorry for any grammatical or spelling mistakes I make, I try my best to reread chapters multiple times but I'm only human and things occasionally slip by. Feel free to point any out if you see them!)
> 
> **Next Chapter - Split into two parts: one focuses on Caroline in her new dorm with her roommates, and the second focuses on Rebekah and as she settles in. ******


	2. There Are No Bitches Here

They were all quiet as the nurse escorted them to their room. Opening the door, Caroline wasn't shocked at the sight of the especially ordinary room that beheld her. Whitewashed walls, tiled floors, three metal framed beds that lined separate walls made with blankets, flat looking pillows, and a pile of folded clothes and towels, bedside tables sat the the left of each of the beds with light blue lamps and alarm clocks, a dark wooden desk accompanied by a black fabric seat with three notebooks, pens, and a stack of paper, an depressingly empty linoleum lined bookshelf beside an open closet with some wire coat hangers covered in cotton and three pairs of slippers, and directly opposite the door, a large window that looked upon the thick forest that backed the place. Caroline spotted her bag of belongings underneath the bed beneath the window, and immediately rushed towards it.

Hayley and Bonnie stood in the door way watching until they realized what Caroline was doing, and soon ran towards the beds with their bags, and took out their things.

Bonnie picked out a plush, but ragged, teddy bear and laid it tenderly across her pillow. She picked out a large woolen quilt; checker boarded in in purple and plum, and wrapped it around her shoulders. Pulling out tattered books, a pack of basic playing cards, as well as vibrant tarot cards, and walked over to the shelves, lining them all up on the top. Then making her way back to her bed, she grabbed yet another book, but this one was different. It was a photo album, each page lined with photos of her, from the day she was born to her graduation. With her mother, her father, her best friends, her grams. She gave a watery smile as she pushed it underneath her pillow, for later.

Caroline delicately placed a black photo frame on her side table, a picture of her and her mom on her twelfth birthday. Beside it, she put an ornate, mirrored jewelry box, of necklaces and bracelets she had collected throughout her years, a small tub of vanilla body butter, a hairbrush, and a large faced watch. She immediately fastened the thick leather straps around her bony wrist. Then, reaching further into her large duffel bag, she lifted out three board games that she had somehow managed to stuff in there. Her favorite games that she had brought along to the first place she went to for help, Clue, The Game Of Life, and Mastermind. The kind of games she thought that no one could ever get bored of, or at least, she couldn't. She put them on the shelf.

Hayley, however, didn't have what the other girls did. She had nothing within her depleted backpack but a leather bracelet, some hair ties and clips, an old map of the country, and a cherry chap-stick. Shoving the bag back beneath her bed, she laid down and shut her eyes.

Caroline smiled. "So, Hayley, I'm curious, why do you _have_ to be here? Is it your parents who are making you or something?"

Hayley sighed deeply. "I don't have parents." Her voice was cold.

"Oh, uh, I'm- I'm sorry-" Caroline started sputtering out.

"I'm here because I set my group home on fire." She licked her lips, staring at the ceiling. "I didn't mean to, I told them that, but when I wouldn't apologize in court for the accident, they sent me to jail for a few months, and made me get a mental evaluation, then sent me here. So yeah…"

"I'm sorry." Caroline said lamely.

"No one ever believes the orphan girl. They think I'm an arsonist." Hayley cracked her neck.

Before Caroline could reply, Bonnie abruptly stood. "Free time has started, I'm going to the recreation room." She stated as she started towards the door.

Caroline silently stood and followed Bonnie, but Hayley stayed in the dorm, clearly wanting to be alone.

When they made it to the room, Caroline saw that almost everyone was there, plus other people that she didn't recognize, probably from other groups. It was a big room, but quite dark, although there were a lot of big windows, they backed onto the woods, and the trees blocked out what little of the fall sun they would've been getting. There were some worn leather couches in the corner that were huddled around a TV. Beside them, there was a cabinet that showed a small selection of DVD's, board games, puzzles, and books. There were a few sets of table and chairs as well, and Caroline walked over to an empty seat at a table already occupied by Damon and Stefan.

"So, you're brothers?" She said, interrupting their conversation.

They looked at her blankly.

She smiled awkwardly. "I didn't think they would allow family members in the same group… You know, might mess with… Progress or something…" She trailed off.

"… It's meant to allow us to work through our issues together…" Stefan replied slowly.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Listen Blondie, we were kind of having a conversation here, so could you scoot off and go bother someone else." Damon said, his tone crass and unkind. Stefan glanced to him with irritation in his eyes, but didn't say anything.

Caroline stood and stormed off, offended at their rudeness, she busied herself in joining Elena, Tyler, and other patients she hadn't met before, who were watching a somewhat questionable movie – One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Caroline didn't know how that was allowed in.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Rebekah was halfway through a kitten puzzle when Kol sat down on the seat across from her, sighing dramatically deep, he rested an elbow upon the table, placed his head upon his fist, and stared at her, as though he was waiting for her to notice and acknowledge his presence in front of her.

She ignored him and continued.

"I'm bored." He stated, his voice flat and expectant, like he thought she could do anything about it.

She continued ignoring him. He grew restless at her seemingly inability to recognize his existence in that moment.

"I'm starving, did you know that we all have to eat together, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Only then. I'm not even allowed snacks or anything. They call this place a 'mental recovery center' but it feels more like some sort of concentration camp." He paused mid rant, repeating his melodramatic sigh. "Not to mention my god awful roommate…"

"Kol, be careful, your wrist might break if you rest your giant head on it for too long." Rebekah quipped, not even needing to look up to sense his offended look.

Unlike his self, however, instead of replying with an equally rude comment, he got up and stormed off. Rebekah was almost disturbed at this, as he normally loved to bicker, but not enough so that she stopped her puzzle. She was determined to finish the picture of a kitten playing in a field of daises.

After a few minutes, she could feel the burning sensation of a stare on her back. She turned and glanced around the room, coming to find the gaze Stefan upon her, of whom was sitting with Damon, who it seemed hadn't even noticed he had lost his brother's attention and continued on flapping his mouth. The minute their met eyes she thought she could feel a flurry of sparks sprinkle throughout her body, it felt exciting.

She didn't know whether to carry on with her puzzle and pretend she had never caught him, or to abandon her progress and advance towards him and see why he was staring at her. But before she could even make a decision, he tore his eyes from hers, and continued on with the conversation with his brother. It left her feeling frustrated. She didn't know why she felt that way, he was just some random guy with amazing hair and beautiful eyes and and a smile that made her knees fee weak and- No.

She was jumping to conclusions again. She always did. That's what her first therapist told her she always did, and that she needed to stop. They were patients, and they were there to get better, not involved with each other. She needed to stop.

But the way she saw him looking at her for that split second felt like nothing she had never experienced before. It was forbidden, but a different kind of forbidden, not like with the other boys she had been with, he seemed, different. Slowing her mind and thoughts, Rebekah forced herself to think rationally.

She shakily picked up a puzzled piece and tried it in an empty space. It didn't fit.

"Rebekah we must escape this place."

She impatiently looked up to Klaus. "Oh god, whatever are you paranoid about now, brother?" She huffed out; annoyed that she just couldn't seem to finish this goddam puzzle without anyone interrupting her.

He bent down towards he, a panicked look in his eyes. "These people are insufferable, they are crazy, all of them! I can't take it anymore."

Rebekah was surprised it was Nik who was having a harder time than she was, although that was probably because she was used to having no freedom. "Wow, did you ever think that might be because we are in a _mental hospital_?" She asked sarcastically.

He pulled up the sleeve to reveal a large bite mark on his forearm. Rebekah looked at it, now truly disturbed.

"Where the bloody hell did you get that from?" The disbelief in her voice was evident.

"I was sitting on the sofa reading when some patient who introduced himself as Oscar sat down beside me and started rambling on about how 'they are coming to get him' and how he needs 'fresh flesh not the poisoned green leaves that brainwash your mind'. I of course, ignored him, being the civilized person I am. And then he grabbed my arm and clamped his teeth down on me!" He raged on. "I had to get it disinfected, and then some nurse came and apologized to me saying how she 'didn't know how he got out because he was meant to be in isolation because he was a known violent'!"

"Ew." Was all Rebekah could say.

"And now you know why we need to escape!" Nik exclaimed, spewing, but Rebekah rolled her eyes.

"Look, Nik, I know you were bitten, but I think you're being a bit extreme, I mean we can't just-"

"-Fine!" Nik interjected indignantly. "If you won't help me, I'll find someone else who will."

Rebekah smirked at this paranoia. "Good luck with that."

His face twitched as he glanced around the room. "I'm sure Kol will want to assist."

Looking up, she searched around the room for Kol, and her smirk immediately returned once she caught sight of him; chatting up some blonde nurse by the window, his charm clearly turned on. "Yeah, I'd think twice about that, he doesn't look like he's ready to leave just yet."

Catching her line of sight, he frowned, and stalked off silently.

"Hey, what was he so angry about?" Rebekah looked up to find the foreign voice coming from yet another person who had decided to sit with her; her admirer.

But she couldn't help but hold in her snort, which was a nuisance because snorts were relatively unattractive. "Oh, just some rabid patient bit him, and now he's hell bent on escaping."

"Oh." Stefan replied quietly, his surprise over the event apparent.

"I'm sorry you got stuck in the same room with him, he can get a bit antsy. If he tries keeping you up all night spouting strange escape routes, just tell him to piss off and ignore anything he says." Adding her general pro tip for handling not only Nik, but all of her brothers, she watched as the former started feeling around on walls, probably looking for some secret entrance that existed only in his mind.

"Well it's not like I get much sleep anyway."

Rebekah bit her tongue. "Sorry."

He smiled though, and Rebekah felt her heart flutter in her chest. "It's alright, we all have our issues, that's why we're here, right?"

Of all the smiles Rebekah had practiced and perfected in the mirror as a teenager, she flashed him her favorite one – the half, closed mouth, coy smile. "Yeah, I guess so." She looked at him through her eyelashes. "It's kind of nice here, we're all in the same boat, in some way, and I don't have to feel like such an outcast."

He looked at her with those eyes that made her feel like she was about to pass out. "We can all understand how each other feel."

"So we don't have to feel alone." Rebekah added, her heart thumping in her chest as he gazed at her softly, something she thought was akin to adoration in his eyes.

However, the moment was ruined, when a nurse walked by quickly, with Kol trailing after her. "I didn't mean the you're a bitch in a _mean_ way." He reasoned loudly, grabbing the attention Stefan and Rebekah, the latter rolling her eyes. "I meant it in an empowering way, Tina Fey once said that 'bitches get stuff done'! So you're a bitch! You get stuff done!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos if you liked the chapter! Please review if you can so I can see what is on people's minds. There isn't really a story line yet, I'm still finding my footing, so tell me if you'd rather there be a big plot that includes all the characters, or have each character have their own individual plots within themselves and each other, tell me. I'm also willing to add any other characters from the TV show that people want, like for example, I intend to add Nora and Mary Louise in the story, but in later chapters. X
> 
> **Next Chapter - Split into two parts: Singular therapy sessions start off with Damon, which will hopefully lighten the mood for the next half. The second part focuses in on Bonnie, who has a... interaction with someone that will leave a deep and heavy imprint on her. ******


	3. Superbad

"So Damon how was your first night?"

"Well, Doc, why don't you tell me?" Damon immediately replied, rhetorically. "My bed is like a slab of concrete, the blanket I spelt with already gave me a rash, and I was awoken in the middle of the night by my 'dorm mate' who cries in his sleep."

Matt was worried by what Damon said, primarily about his roommate. He noted that down, determined to talk about it in his appointment with Enzo. Looking back at, he saw Damon was glaring at him with his piercing blue eyes. "I'm sorry to hear that. I can replace the blanket if you'd like, or maybe if you want something from home…?"

"Forget the blanket, can you replace my roommate?" Damon snarked back, a sneer distorting his lips.

Matt frowned. "Damon, why do you dislike Enzo so much?"

Damon let out a harsh laugh, and stared at Matt, incredulous. "Because he's a a sour, rude, and generally unlikable person who kept me up at night because he started sobbing at the top of his lungs." Leaning forward, he raised his eyebrows. "I don't like it when my beauty sleep is interrupted."

"Don't you think you're being a bit unsympathetic towards how Enzo feels?" Matt proposed, soon elaborating more as Damon stared at him blankly. "Enzo clearly has some trauma that causes him to do what he does when he sleeps. Do you not feel pity towards him, despite your dislike for him?"

"Nope." Damon replied, popping the 'p'.

Matt sighed slightly, knowing that Damon was going to be a hard nut to crack. "Okay then, enough about Enzo, we're here to talk about you."

Damon nodded. "That we are, Doc. Glad you finally realized. What do you want to know?"

Matt shrugged. "Anything, start with anything."

"Ah, okay well then since you say that." Damon leaned back in his seat, relaxed, and stretched out his legs. "So, you know, I'm here for some sort of 'selfish syndrome', or whatever- apparently I'm more vain than other people, right?"

"Um," Matt hesitated, unsure of where Damon was going, "not necessarily, but go on."

"Well that's what the brothers _lovely_ friend, Lexi, told me when she sent me here…" He trailed off, grimacing. " _Anyway_ , so that's meant to be why I'm here, and insomnia is why Stefan is here. But the thing is, that I'm not getting any sleep-"

"-It's only been one day-"

"-And _Stefan_ spends thirty minutes every morning with straightening irons, three different combs, and two types of hair gel to accomplish the perfect oomph that his hair achieves. That seems pretty vain to me, so Doc, I think I've been misdiagnosed." Damon smirked, and leaned back in his seat. Matt could tell that Damon wasn't being serious, and was probably trying to get on his nerves, but beneath all the joking, he could see a more deep-seated issue.

"You know, I've noticed one thing about you Damon." Matt started.

Damon perked up his eyebrows. "And what is that, Doc?"

"Although we have only spoken with each other twice, it seems that every time someone asks more about yourself, you change the subject to talk about your brother Stefan." Matt was interested to see an instant reaction from Damon, as the smirk slid off his face, and his body posture immediately became defensive.

Damon pursed his lips. "Yeah, well, it's not my fault that his hair is so distracting."

Matt sat up, and peered at Damon, trying to decipher his expression. "It's not only that though, Damon, you seem to compare yourself to him at any chance you get and-"

"-You know what, I'm getting pretty tired of this interrogation, and what you're implying." Damon sneered loudly, interrupting Matt's analysis.

"And what do you think I'm 'implying'?"

Damon scoffed. "That I'm some insecure, delicate little flower that can't live up, or more like, live down, to his younger, and greater brother."

"Not so much in those words…" Matt trailed off, and Damon was surprisingly silent. "What do you think?"

"It doesn't matter, this line of questioning is stupid." He replied lamely. "But you know what, Doc, I figured something else out." At this, Damon appeared more eager to talk.

Although he was disappointed that Damon was unwilling to talk more about how he views himself in relation to Stefan (that would definitely take some time), Matt raised his eyebrows in interest, readying his pen to take notes about what Damon had 'figured out'. Damon was definitely resistant to getting help, or even talking about anything serious, so the fact there _was_ something he actually asserted himself to talk about was encouraging.

Waiting for a good thirty seconds, Matt looked up to see that Damon was just staring at him blankly.

"Go ahead."

"So you're not actually a doctor, are you?"

Well that was the exact opposite of what Matt hoped for. Feeling a nervous blush creep up his neck, he shifted in his seat, wondering how the hell he figured it out so quickly. "Well, no but-"

"- _How_ am I supposed to trust that you won't publish a book on anything I say here, or go tell all your little not-doctor friends?" Damon exclaimed, eyeing him indignantly, his arms crossed and his eyebrows furrowed angrily.

Matt swallowed, feeling slightly intimidated by Damon's aggressive way of speaking. "Not that I actually want to, but I can't physically talk about anything any of you say in this room. You're protected by doctor patient confidentiality-"

"-But you're not a doctor."

" _Okay_ ," Matt shot back, irritably, "well then, therapist-patient confidentiality. I have a contract that says so."

Damon pondered this for a moment, and whilst Matt himself pondered why he ever decided to 'learn on the job practically' (which he wasn't even sure was legal), rather than actually get a proper doctors degree. "What if I want a therapist who's actually qualified?"

Matt felt his stomach drop, and the rate of him staying employed started rapidly decreasing by the second, because it definitely wasn't a good thing that the first patient he talked to wanted to change therapist. "Well," He gulped, "if that's what you really want, then-"

But Damon burst out laughing, and Matt stopped in his sentence, slightly disturbed at Damon's sudden change of composure. He went from snarling and glaring, to cracking up and snorting. As the seconds ticked by the tens, and Damon hadn't stopped laughing, Matt found his voice.

"Um, Damon…"

"So- Sor- Sorry. It's just the look on your face when I said that, I swear you were about to wet yourself you were so scared." Damon shrieked, continuing on laughing.

Feeling slightly insulted at the insinuation, Matt cross his arms defensively. "Damon, I need to know if you want to change therapist." He started, seriously, annoyed that his first attempts at actually helping someone ended up in his being laughed at, which certainly _wasn't_ learning on the job.

"Nah, I'd don't want to change therapist, you're just too funny to leave." Damon breathed back, wiping away tears. "Anyway, I seriously doubt any other therapist will let me mock them like I do you."

Matt frowned. "Now, wait a minute Damon, you really shouldn't-"

"-You know what. I do have something serious to ask you though." Damon interrupted, his face now thoughtful, and his eyes concentrated on Matt. He looked concerned, and Matt dropped his attempts at scolding him, and leaned forward.

"What is it, Damon?"

Hesitating, Damon opened, and shut his mouth a few times, seemingly unable to find the words, and Matt softened his eyes, hopeful that Damon was going to come out with something profound and genuine. "But if you're not a doctor…" He trailed off, he rubbed a hand over his face, and looked away from Matt, his eyes lost. "Then…"

He paused dramatically.

"What am I supposed to call you?"

Matt was just about ready to through his useless clipboard across the room and quit his job.

"I mean," Damon leaned back casually, now eyeing Matt, who had already given up on the session, curiously, "I can't call you Doc, because you're not really a doctor… What is your real name anyway?"

"Matt."

" _Matt._ " Damon scowled. "Is that short for something? Mateo, Matthias, Matas, Matey…"

"Matthew. Matthew Donovan." Matt replied through gritted teeth, as Damon started to list the literally most obscure names Matt could be short for. "Listen, _Damon_ , I think that you're tired, and we're not making a lot of progress here just yet. I can try and arrange for you to change roommates, but other than that, you can leave now."

"Thanks, Matthew." Smirking triumphantly, he stood, and started towards the door. Before Matt could even begin to think about how he was going to get through to him, Damon turned back. "Oh, and listen, changing roommates won't be necessary."

Matt was about to sigh in relief over having one less thing to do that day, before Damon continued.

"Its nice to have an excuse other than annoying the hell out of you to leave these things early."

Later that day, Matt joined a meditation group.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

"What are you up to?"

Bonnie jerked her eyes up from her book, to find the one and only Kai, the 'sociopath', standing above her, staring, his eyes were such as mixture of different colors and tones, that it almost fascinated her. A dark blue like the depths of the ocean washed around the rim of his iris, framing the pastel blue feathery strands that streamed out around his pupil, which was like an endless black hole of darkness within the rich jewel colored sea of his eye.

"I know, my eyes are beautiful, I get told all the time." He plopped down beside her casually. "You should see my twin sister Jo's eyes though, now _they_ are eyes like a blue sky."

She cleared her throat. "Um, I'm reading 'The Great Gatsby'." Answering his first question awkwardly. There was something about him that made her uneasy, but she didn't want to be rude, and tried to be nice to him, as she didn't really know him well enough from just one interaction to judge him.

"You know, I've always had a burning, passionate hate for that book. It's absolute garbage." He blurted out rudely. "That could be because I read it during my angsty teenage years, but I just found Jay's love for Daisy so unrealistic. That kind of shit doesn't happen in real life."

Swallowing, Bonnie willed herself to stay quiet, but she couldn't help but defend her favorite book. "' _Unrealistic_ '? 'The Great Gatsby'? Who actually cares? Yeah sure, it could be considered unrealistic considering we are reading it in the period and century we are in, but I'm sure back in the 1920's when the book was set it was the kind of thing that happened in people's lives."

Bonnie couldn't help herself. The words were just pouring out of her mouth.

"The reason it is such a good book is that it makes connections with our hearts, imaginations, dreams and desires. Despite his moral deceit of being a bootlegger and his false pretense of being someone he isn't, Gatsby inspires our feelings, in a 'transcendent sense', he touches our imagination with his optimistic idealism and passionate love. He is like a... mythological creature, something unreal." Bonnie paused, and caught her breath. "'Unrealistic'? Wow, says the guy who listed out all eight of the 'mental disorders' he had been diagnosed with by doctors." She sneered out, suddenly uncaring as to whether she was being judgmental or not, he irked her in a way that no one else had ever before. And they had only spoken to each other twice.

He however smirked. "Hey, you tell them how implausible that is. They don't call me the psychological enigma for nothing." It was as though he hadn't even registered the first statements of her rant. As though anything that wasn't about him were just redundant words.

"I think you might be giving yourself too much credit." Bonnie replied, rolling her eyes.

"Okay then, why don't you try and diagnose me." His voice was innocent. She was disconcerted at his sudden change in tone.

Bonnie snorted, nonetheless. "The only way I could diagnose you was if I was a doctor, knew your life story, and actually cared. But I obtain none of those qualifications." She paused. "Nor do I ever want to."

"You've got social anxiety, right?"

She knew she had already told him why she was there a couple of days ago. He knew, so what was his game? He was clearly playing one… Frowning, Bonnie glared at him sharply. "No. It's none of your business."

But he held up his hands in retreat. "Sorry, I just kind of assumed, you're so crass and aggressive and clearly have no idea how to act appropriately in public."

Fuming, Bonnie slammed her book shut, stood, and stormed towards the door and away from him. She wanted nothing to do with him, and he clearly wasn't going to go away by himself. However, he didn't seem to be getting the message, as he was following her closely behind.

She halted to a sudden stop. "I'm going to my room. Go away." She said stiffly, without turning around.

"Why do you want me to go away?"

His voice was dark, and sinister, vastly differing to how he had just been speaking. She swallowed thickly. Her breathing quickened. The room felt as though it was spinning. "You… You- You make me feel-"

She felt his breath on her ear. "Uncomfortable?"

Her heart was beating at a hundred a minute, her blood was pounding in her ears, her mouth went dry, and her words lost in her stomach. With every breath she took, she felt as though she was suffocating more and more, she needed to get away from him. "Nu- Nu- NURSE! Nurse, someone, help me please!" She managed to yell out, starting to run from him.

But he grabbed her wrist, jerking her backwards and pulling her close, she could feel him breathing on her face. His eyes were no longer a vast ocean or blue like she saw before, but fully black, his pupils dilated completely. His nostrils were flared with every breath he took, and his white teeth were bared as he stared her down, his grasp around her wrist like a tightening handcuff around her freedom. "You shouldn't have done that Bon." He whispered, and she started to be transported back to the day of her trauma, the day that still gave her night terrors, and still made her instinctively distrustful of anyone.

Suddenly two nurses appeared behind him and seized him by his arms, one violently stabbing him in the neck with a syringe. But nothing worked; his hand was still gripped around her wrist, tightening every second as she struggle away from him, his eyes were still plastered on hers, and even as the drug took effect and he slowly, slowly fell to the ground, his eyelids dropping down, his hands was _still,_ wrapped around her wrist, in an iron grip.

It was only when the nurses dragged him away that she realized the scene they had made, everyone, nurses, doctors, patients, were staring at her, some in horror, pity, fear.

She was shaking. Tears dropped out of the corners of her eyes. Her wrist still burned where he had touched her. Bonnie had no idea what had just happened, what he had done and why it had scarred her so much.

"Are you alright love?"

Looking up and through blurred vision, Bonnie saw Kol was standing in front of her, watching her with what appeared to be concern. It was strange, considering the way he had already established himself in the group session, but he seemed genuine in his worry, which was... nice. But she couldn't speak because her stomach was still lodged in her throat, so she just nodded, small.

He licked his lips. "Must've given you a fright."

She nodded again, and looked away, still trying to catch her breath, and blink back tears. She knew she was being pathetic and stupid and she had probably overreacted, but the way he was acting; Bonnie had never been so scared. Not since that day her life fell apart and she changed forever.

"Bonnie!" Caroline ran up to her, her blue eyes wide and teary. "Are you okay? What did he do to you?"

Letting out a shaking breath, Bonnie willed her heart to slow down. "Nothing, he just…" She swallowed. "There's something off about him, I don't know what. He just wouldn't… Leave me alone." Bonnie noticed Kol back away behind Caroline, and return to to his brother Klaus, but not without giving her one last glance, to which she smiled.

Caroline nodded sympathetically, grabbing her attention back. "Come on, Tyler came up with the stupidly brilliant idea of having a movie marathon, and we are going to try and make our way through their massive collection of Michael Cera movies." She said, excited. "Come, we're watching Superbad, and we're just at the bit where they got the fake ID, and Fogell aka McLovin is trying to buy booze."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I think I've now got an idea on what plot I want to do. I've had this written for a while, but kept on rewriting it because I wanted to do a plot that includes everyone, instead of individual plots for characters. I'm excited I finally made my mind up, I now know what to do, and it'll start to officially develop next chapter!
> 
> Please review if you can, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Subscribe if you want to be alerted about future updates and see where this is all going, and Kudos if you think I did a good job. Thank you so much for reading! X
> 
> **Next Chapter - Hayley is minding her own business eating the garbage they serve up and call breakfast, when an agitated Tyler joins her, and drops that he knows something about someone in their group, and it's not good. Once they've finished arguing about what they will do with the information, Tyler proceeds to tell basically everyone else in their group during recreation time, and they debate. ******


	4. Have A Nice Rest Of Your Life

Hayley was pushing around the mush on her plate and thinking disdainfully about the group therapy session that was due later in the week when Tyler sat himself down in front of her.

She was surprised someone was actually sitting with her, not like she really cared, but most of the other people in their group was sitting on the other side of the cafeteria. Tyler and her had never really had a conversation, although they had only been there a couple of days, and she hadn't left the room but to eat.

"I don't like the others." He muttered, his tone full of venom. "They piss me off."

Hayley couldn't help but smirk. "At least you've only got one of them in your room. I got stuck with the two 'besties' who decide to spend most nights getting to know each other."

Aggressively tearing a piece of bread, stuffing it in his mouth, and chewing, he sniffed, and swallowed. "Yeah but Kol's a piece of fucking shit."

Hayley contemplated this for a moment. "That we both can agree on."

They sat in a comfortable silence, both eating their food. Finished, Hayley stood, and picked up her tray, leaving to get her medication, and go, until Tyler stopped her. "Wait. Sit down."

"Why?" She asked, confused. Okay, they had a friendly exchange, but she wasn't going to sit there and wait for him to finish his food so he didn't have to eat alone.

"Just sit down." He said, that time more firmly. Muttering a "whatever" under her breath, Hayley sat, staring at him with raised brows.

"What do you want?"

He looked from side to side; his eyes almost shifty as he contemplated the clinically white tiled lunchroom around them. "What do you think of that Kai guy?" His voice was lowered, as though he was scared someone was going to overhear the conversation.

Rolling her eyes, Hayley sighed deeply. "Did you seriously stop me from leaving because you want to gossip about some weirdo. I don't gossip Tyler, for fucks-"

"Just answer the question!" He spat out, a burst of apparently unintentional anger shooting out. Hayley just stared at him. Who did he think he was? Thinking he could order her around? "Look, I'm sorry." He started, looking down embarrassed. "I shouldn't have shouted at you like that, it's just, you know, intermittent explosive disorder, sometimes gets away from me."

Hayley crossed her arms and just stared back at him, an unimpressed look in her eyes, but she stayed put, nonetheless.

"What do you think of him?" He continued, a strange look in his eyes.

She shrugged. "I don't know, he arrived in a straitjacket accompanied by two nurses, and everything he's done and said since then scream that he's completely deranged, but aren't we all. I mean - that's why we're here."

"I read about him."

Hayley blinked, confused. "What?"

"Online, before I got sent here, I read about him."

"Well?" Hayley asked, shaking her head. "Are you going to tell me what you read about him, or do you want me to beg? That's why you made me stay here, because you want to tell me."

He leaned forward over the table, so his hushed voice could be heard over the chatter. "He tried killing his family."

Her eyes widened, air was sucked out of her lungs, and her mouth hung open in shock. "What the fuck?"

"Apparently he's from Oregon, and his father was like the leader of this cult thing, he was one of seven children." Tyler glanced around the room to make sure Kai wasn't anywhere nearby to overhear them, but he wasn't even in the room, probably in his room in isolation eating after yesterday. "I read he was really badly abused by his father and family, and he wanted to get back at them, so he planned this mass murder on some really significant night for the cult."

"Mass murder?" Hayley repeated stupidly.

"Yeah, when the night came by, he had only managed to stab one of his brothers before he was stopped. Basically, his dad had found the plans the night before and was planning on sending him to a mental institution the next day." Sitting back, Tyler felt a rush of relief over the fact that he told someone.

"But this is a mental _recovery_ center. Not an institution, or better yet, a jail, where he should be." Hayley couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe that she had to share a room everyday with someone who had attempted murder. And Hayley was a pretty tough person, but the thought of someone trying to take another's life without their permission, the thought of murder, made her sick. Especially if it was your family, because she knew if she had ever been gifted with knowing her relatives, that she would treasure them to no end.

"That's not all." Tyler replied. "He was only sixteen when that happened." Pausing, Tyler allowed that to sink in. "That was six years ago. He did go to a jail for the criminally insane."

She was having a hard time wrapping her head around it all. "But, then why is he here at a mental recovery center in central Virginia?"

"He was released after six years, his family tried to stop it, but he was out early on good behavior. Saying he had schizophrenia, they sent him over to the other side of the country as far away as possible to here, a small town mental 'recovery' center, where they'll leave him for the rest of his life, I bet." Tyler couldn't believe his eyes when he saw Kai walk in the room in that first session, he looked exactly like he had in the photo in that news article about his release that Tyler had read, he felt ill at the sight of him. But he didn't want to say anything; he didn't want to make an enemy of the self-proclaimed sociopath.

Hayley hugged herself tightly. "God, I don't think I can stand to be in the same room as him in the group therapy session."

"I know right. We may be craz- unstable, but at least we haven't tried to kill anyone." Tyler replied, staring at his food blankly, unable to finish it anymore.

They were both quiet.

"What should we do?" Tyler suddenly asked.

Hayley looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," He said, raising his eyebrows at her, "we can't just sit back and pretend like we don't know about it. We need to do something."

"Like what?" Hayley shot back, annoyed. "There's nothing we can do about it, the people on the medical board have already said it's okay for us to share the same food as the attempted murderer, I don't think the complaints of registered mental patients is going to make them change their minds."

"Oh so what?" He asked loudly. "Just because we have mental health issues we don't have a voice? That's bullshit, you and I both know that."

"Yeah, it's bullshit, but that's the way the system works." She whispered harshly, trying to calm him down. "We are not deemed mentally competent, so any complaints we have aren't taken seriously."

Clenching his jaw and swallowing thickly, he stared at his plate, knowing she was right. "God… this fucking sucks." He cursed, frustrated.

"I know." Hayley agreed. "But-"

Tyler suddenly jumped up before she could finish what she was saying, his eyes plastered to the clock in the wall above her head.

She narrowed her eye irritated that he wasn't listening to her. "Tyler I-"

"-Recreation time starts now." He muttered hurriedly, grabbing his tray. "I'm going to tell the others what I know, if we can all band together, then I know we might be able to do something, there's strength in numbers!"

Hayley stared after him blankly as he scurried away, knowing there was no way in hell she was going to follow him into that room of perdition.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Tyler immediately spotted them when he walked into the room, and he wondered how they had all gotten there so quick. But not only that, but he was also shocked that most of the people in his group were sitting in the same lounge area, considering that there were really some conflicting personalities there. Yet, they all seemed to be tolerating each other; Elena was smiling small as Damon talked her ear off, Bonnie was reading quietly, Kol and Klaus appeared to be bickering between themselves, Stefan and Caroline conversed, and Rebekah talked to Enzo, however was also stealing jealous looking glances at the insomniac every other second.

The only person Tyler didn't see was Hayley, who he wasn't surprised hadn't followed him since she pretty much hated them all and had never been in the social room, and Kai, who he was glad not to see, since he was about to tell everyone about him.

He felt hopeful that everyone would listen to him and they could get rid of the psycho attempted murderer.

"We all need to talk about Kai." Tyler started urgently as he sat down in the free armchair, grabbing all of their attention through his frantic tone. He saw Bonnie noticeably tense at the mention of his name, as she clearly was still unnerved by the guy after what happened. Tyler almost felt guilty at bringing it up, but they needed to know, it was for the best, he knew they needed to do something about it.

Damon stopped talking to Elena, and sat forward, his eyebrows peaked in interest. "What about the little sociopath? Did he attack you like he did Judgy?"

Elena elbowed him in the ribs sharply, and Tyler grinned as he saw the asshole hiss in pain. Taking Bonnie's hand in her own, and squeezing it comfortingly, Elena looked at Tyler. "What are you talking about?" She asked gently, her dark eyes warm with concern.

"Well…" Tyler started, suddenly unsure of how to put it. "You know how there's something kind of, off, with Kai?"

Enzo scoffed loudly, pursed his lips, and shook his head at Tyler, seemingly confused. "Oh no! I think that he's completely _fine_ , I mean, other than the fact that he arrived in a straitjacket, called himself a sociopath, and attacked Bonnie all in a few days, I think he seems completely absolutely 100% flipping sane! I can't imagine why ever he is in here?!"

Wavering in his seat, Tyler furrowed his brows, and frowned, confused at what Enzo was saying, as it made no sense. He didn't understand. Enzo's tone of voice was as weird as his convoluted words. Tyler remained silent, wondering why would Enzo say he thought Kai was completely fine and sane, when he obviously wasn't-

"-It's called _sarcasm_ , darling, a tool of the English that American's _clearly_ are yet to fully comprehend." Rebekah sighed loudly. Tyler cringed, embarrassed that he hadn't understood that Enzo was being sarcastic. He then decided that he blamed the stupid accent, which was barely intelligible, especially when being sarcastic. Rebekah exchanged a knowing and incredulous glance with Enzo, and then turned back to Tyler, widening her eyes. "I take it that you were trying to imply that Kai is probably the most insane person in this state?"

Tyler nodded quietly, glancing around as everyone stared at him, second hand embarrassment playing out across their eyes. He then became bitter, as it appeared he was the only person, including the Americans, who hadn't understood that Enzo was being sarcastic. That damn accent.

"Why are you telling us something we already know?"

It was Bonnie who had spoken that time, snapping Tyler out of his humiliation, and back into the reality of the situation. And before he could stop himself to ensure it made any sense, he had already blurted out everything he knew about Kai. Everything. The cultish family, his murder plans at sixteen, the arrest, his release, and then his family flying him all the way over to the east coast to get him as far away from them as possible. It all just fell out of his mouth, first in what he thought was incomprehensible sentences, but by the looks on their faces, he knew they understood.

Everyone, even Kol, stared at him with widened eyes, speechless.

Then, Bonnie let out a mangled sound, and her smacked her hand to her mouth to smother any more, her eyes watering, and her face distorted into one of shock. Elena quickly gathered the small girl into her arms and held her as Bonnie shook violently, and even Damon leaned his arm around Elena and put a comforting hand on Bonnie's shoulder, squeezing softly.

"What do we do?" Caroline was the first to ask the question, indignation painting her face. "He doesn't belong here with us! With his past, and him having already attacked Bonnie, he should've been kicked out days ago." She crossed her arms angrily, her brows heavily furrowed as the others around her nodded in agreement. Stefan placed his hand on her arm and squeezed it in support.

Having both seen the gesture, Klaus and Rebekah immediately jumped up with panicked expressions. "I say we-" Rebekah started.

"-Get rid of him!" Klaus finished loudly. The siblings both desperately were looking at Caroline and Stefan to see whether they caught their attention.

"We can't." Tyler replied flatly, and the Mikaelsons snapped to his attention, appearing to be slightly rattled.

Enzo leaned forward, and pursed his lips. "What do you mean 'we can't'?" He asked with his lips twisted into a leer.

"I mean," Tyler mirrored his movements and expression, "no one is going to listen to anything we say, and we have no power here. We can't get rid of him, whether we like it or not."

Everyone was quiet for a moment, their looks crestfallen as they realized that what Tyler said was right. They _didn't_ have power. They were there because they weren't considered in their right minds. If they tried throwing around ideas like getting a fellow patient kicked out, it wouldn't work because they weren't considered mentally competent do suggest things like that. Who were they to say who was too insane to be there? But it sucked, nonetheless. It really did.

"It's not fair." Elena stressed, rubbing circles onto Bonnie's back, who remained silent. "He doesn't belong here."

"No he doesn't."

Everyone turned around to the source of the new and foreign sounding voice, and found two women patients standing beside each other, shaking their heads. All who were seated stared at the newcomers in confusion.

"We know everything about this place, and to our knowledge he actually belongs in Ward D." The redheaded one continued, as they both moved around and sat on the empty sofa.

"Yes," The brunette piped up, "that's were my girlfriend is."

"And Oscar. And Beau." The redhead added.

The brunette gave her a look. "Beau was brought back down to C last month, Val, didn't you know?"

The redhead tipped her head back, a look of understanding over taking her face. "Oh yes, I remember now." They both nodded at each other, and then turned to stare at the others, knowing looks on their fine features.

No one really knew what to say to the random patients who intruded on their conversation.

"Um…" Stefan started awkwardly.

"Who the hell are you?" Damon asked rudely, but they didn't seem to care.

The redhead replied, giving them all a curt nod, "I'm Valerie, and this is Nora." She gestured to the brunette, who flashed them a smirk. "We know everything about this place, and we over heard your conversation about your little friend Kai."

"What's Ward D?" Rebekah quickly asked the strangers, who claimed they knew everything, the question that they were all thinking.

Nora's smirk widened when she looked at Rebekah, and she licked her lips. "This mental recovery center is split into four Wards: A, B-"

"Wait let me guess!" Damon interrupted sarcastically. "Are the other two Ward C and D?" Elena once again elbowed Damon in the ribs, but Nora just rolled her eyes at him.

"We are currently in Ward A and B, this is where they place the low security patients, the ones who were admitted voluntarily either by themselves or by others." Valerie continued on, but that struck a chord in a certain someone.

Enzo perked up, and frowned. "But I wasn't admitted here voluntarily…" He replied, confusion painting his voice.

"Whatever, no one cares about your sob story." Damon shot back, causing Elena to up her game of elbowing him in the ribs to stomping on his foot.

"This Ward is generally for the low risk patients." Nora directed at Enzo, ignoring Damon's reply. She then continued on with her explanation, uncaring to the inner group tensions. "Ward C is where they put people who they believe are might harm themselves, and thus need more security, or are flat out refusing to receive help."

"They are basically more difficult to deal with than us." Valerie summarized.

"That's where Beau is, he's a mute." Nora added, smiling at the memory of her friend.

" _What's_ Ward D?" Klaus repeated his sister's question, more urgently.

Nora bit her lip, and Valerie shot him a look. "Ward D is for the violent patients."

"Or the disobedient get sent there." Nora added, her face stoic. "Trust me, you don't want to get sent to Ward D."

Elena leaned forward, her eyes soft. "Why is your girlfriend there?" She asked Nora gently.

The brunette's eyes flashed with anger, and her nostrils flared. "One of the Nurses said…" She paused, and took a shaky breath; everyone remained silent as they waited. "He said, 'God hates fags, it's a shame we can't just lynch you all anymore'."

Kol hissed. "Jesus Christ." He muttered, the out of character disbelief painted his face as it did everyone else's.

"Mary Louise punched him, and she got sent to Ward D." She sniffed, and shook her head, sitting up from her slouch, and hardening her face. "Anyway, like I said, people who are disobedient are sent to Ward D, it's meant to be the mental institution equivalent of hell."

Bonnie let out a breath of disbelief, and shook her head. "Then _why_ isn't Kai there?"

"Who said he isn't?" Damon countered. He gave a pointed look around the room. "He doesn't seem to be here for play time, and we all know how the little sociopath doesn't like to be restricted."

"He's probably there." Valerie agreed, nodding at Damon. "So don't worry Bonnie, you'll only have to see him during the group sessions."

Tyler let out a choking sound. Everyone instantly turned their heads to watch as he seemingly suffocated on the air he was breathing. It continued on for a few moments, but no one did anything, because they really didn't know what to do other than watch as Tyler's face grew redder and redder and more and more spit sprouted from his lips.

"Um…" Rebekah started awkwardly.

Caroling quickly took initiative and rushed over to Tyler, patting him on the back. He quickly recovered after Caroline's help, and looked at Valerie, his eyes wild. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE'LL ONLY SEE HIM DURING THE GROUP SESSIONS?"

Nora once again rolled her eyes, and Valerie tilted her head, looking at him questioningly through thoughtfully squinted eyes. "What Val means is that Kai is still assigned to Matt, so he'll be in your sessions, but other than that you won't have to see him." She replied like it was easy.

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Enzo butted in, his voice incredulous. "Are you saying that we still have to interact with the lad after everything he's done?"

"Yes."

Kol stood, shaking his head. "How is this place a medical establishment? Putting people here against their will, and making them interact with attempted murderers?" Klaus and Rebekah were both shocked at their brother's morality, and his lack of Tina Fey quotes. That definitely meant that he felt bothered by the revelation. He stepped away from the lounge area, and headed towards the door. "I'm going to take a nap." He stated, and then left.

Kol's exit started a silence between everyone as they took in all that they had just found out. Everything that Kai did, and how they had to still be around him even though he was clearly a danger to everyone. It was a lot to take in all at once.

"Well," Valerie began after a minute, giving a side-glance to Nora, and they both rose in business-like unison. "It was nice ushering you towards your new found knowledge of how corrupt the Augustine Center is." She gave them a cordial smile, and a curt nod, as if they had just completed a fair negotiation, and not that they were stuck wining and dining with an attempted murderer.

"I hope you all have a nice rest of your lives here, and we'll probably see you later." Nora added, matching Valerie's grin, and they both turned and walked off, leaving unsavory tastes in all of the remaining peoples mouths.

Rebekah jumped up, pursing her lips. "Well I certainly need time to recover after that." She announced grandly, as if people actually cared how she felt, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "Stefan, would you please escort me to my dorm?"

It was a question but was stated as a command, and Stefan knew that. So he nodded, and followed after her, offering her his arm, which she gratefully took, and no one other than Stefan missed the vicious glare she threw at Caroline over her shoulder as they strolled out.

Klaus chuckled. "Looks like my sister will have a bounty out for your head by tomorrow Caroline."

The blonde just furrowed her brows, and groaned. "I haven't done anything wrong though!" She huffed, throwing her hands up.

"Exactly."

Caroline gave him a look, and Klaus just smiled wider. "Why don't you come with me to the dining area, and I can explain?" He suggested, a twinkle in his gaze. Caroline rolled her eyes, but they both left together, Klaus leaning in towards her whispering inaudible words, causing Caroline to slap in playfully on the chest as they walked out the room.

"And then there were five." Damon stated loudly, a knowing smirk on his lips.

"Think again." Bonnie muttered sullenly, and that was when Damon noticed with a flood of relief that his 'pal' Enzo was gone.

Tyler leaned forward eagerly, rubbing his hands together. "We need to get Kai out of here." He announced.

"Oh yeah? And what have you got planned Copernicus?" Damon yelled sarcastically, staring at Tyler with his mouth hung open in astonishment at the stupid things that came out of the kid's mouth. When Tyler didn't respond because he was too busy trying to figure out what the hell a Copernicus was, Damon stood, and waved his hand towards the door. "Come on Elena, let's get away from here before his stupidity becomes contagious."

Elena looked uncomfortable, and glanced at Tyler, and then at Bonnie, who was still curled up on the couch beside her, her head rested on a pillow and her eyes staring blankly ahead. "What about Bonnie?" Elena mouthed silently at him.

"Okay, Bon Bon can come as well." Damon relented, tugging at Elena's arm as she stood and started towards the door, but immediately stopped when she saw Bonnie wasn't following.

"Bonnie…?"

But the girl shook her head, giving her friend a weak smile. "It's alright Elena, you go, I'm going to stay here for a bit longer."

Elena accepted this pretty easily, and was gone with Damon but a moment later. And when she saw this, Bonnie quickly sat up, her blank eyes igniting into ones of determination. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, folded her hands in front of her, and looked at Tyler dead on.

"We need to get rid of Kai."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, finally came up with a plot. Honestly, I just love Kai so much (he's a terrible person, don't get me wrong, but he's my problematic fave), and he's clearly less sane than all the other characters, so I thought that it would be an interesting story to look at. I could've done one about Matt not actually being a doctor, but as I said, Kai lover over here. 
> 
> But the story isn't just them trying to get rid of Kai, it's also about their overall journey, and you learn more about their characters as well as their relationships with each other and their road to recovery. It's not just going to be focused on deposing of Kai.
> 
> There will definitely be more Nora, Valerie, and eventually Mary-Louise coming up, and you'll find out more about why they are actually there. I'm thinking of adding Katherine as well, but I need to figure out what to do about the whole 'she looked exactly the same as Elena' thing.
> 
> OH, and I know the chapter is longer than the last ones, sorry about that if you prefer shorter chapters. I did intend on this story having around a 3,200 word limit, but I just can't help myself. Pretty sure the chapters will just get longer and longer, knowing me. So apologies in advance about that if you don't like it.
> 
> Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Tell me what you think, and also tell me if you want me to add any other characters and whether you'd like to see Katherine. Subscribe if you want to be alerted about future updates. Thank you so much for reading! X
> 
>  
> 
> **Next Chapter - There will be an interaction between Caroline and Klaus which will show some unrequited pining. Klaus will also see Kol up to some suspicious behavior. Then, there will be a group therapy session that will quickly erupt into chaos because of a certain two that end up in a fistfight.**
> 
>  
> 
> **(I will warn you though, that these Next Chapter plans sometimes change when I'm writing and editing, so it's just a rough idea.) ******


	5. Goals

Klaus spotted Caroline sitting beside the window, her blonde hair aglow to gold under the sunlight, and her cobalt eyes electric with joy as they skimmed across the lines of worn pages she cradled in her hands. He watched her by the doorway as a soft smile painted her lips, and she let out a laugh every now and then. Klaus realized he must've been staring for a very long time when she looked up and returned his stare with a grin, and waved her hand over to him, signaling to Klaus that he should snap out of it and go to her before he appeared overly creepy.

He sat down on the cool chair across from her and felt shivers run down his spine, and he wasn't too sure if it was because of the cold metal of his seat, or because of how he felt under her gaze.

"Hey." She said as she folded up the pages and slipped them into the pocket of her shirt, just over her heart. "What're you up to?"

Shit. What _was_ Klaus doing before he stopped and decided to stare at Caroline…? Oh, that's right, he was looking for Caroline.

But he couldn't tell her that.

"I was looking for Kol."

It was the first thing that came to mind, probably because that used to be something he spent half his time doing before he got put in the institution. The other half was spent looking for Rebekah. _God_ , how troublesome younger siblings were, especially the rebellious ones that liked to elope or fly to other continents where their favorite actress is filming.

"I needed to talk to him about the family visits."

Caroline nodded understandingly, and then glanced around the room. "Oh, well, last time I checked he was talking to Bonnie, but it appears they've gone somewhere else…" Her voice trailed off as her eyes turned thoughtful, her brows furrowed, and she bit her lip, seemingly thinking hard.

She was adorable. "Yes. I've noticed that Kol has seemed to take quite a liking to Bonnie." Klaus noted, rubbing his chin. "But then again, Kol takes a liking to most women, I'm surprised he hasn't harassed you yet."

Tipping her head back and letting out a tinkling laugh, Caroline slapped him on the knee gently, and shook her head, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "He actually did already, a few days ago he tried singing 'Sweet Caroline' to me, like I haven't heard that a million times before." She rolled her eyes and smirked. "Like come on, if you're going to try and pick someone up in a situation as unique as this one, you gotta have a bit of originality, you know what I mean?"

Klaus grinned, not at his brother's cheesy pick up, but at Caroline's laugh, which was musical and as beautiful as she was. He felt like a sailor at the will of a siren's charms with her, but he didn't mind one bit. "Kol tries as hard as he can to shove the quotes of some actress into his every day life, he doesn't understand the concept of 'originality'."

But she waved her hand about dismissively and looked at him. "It doesn't matter anyway, he's not really my type."

He felt his heart flutter slightly in his chest and his breath hold in his throat. Yet he tried as he could to maintain his cool demeanor as he leaned forward with smoldering eyes, and gazed at her. "What is your type then, love?" He asked, his voice deep like thick honey.

When he saw her face slightly redden at his his advances, a smirk made it's way onto his lips, and he knew his mission was accomplished, as he was _obviously_ her type if he could get her all bothered like that. Caroline took a few deep breaths as she appeared to ponder on this, and Klaus held his own in anticipation as he waited for her reply.

She shrugged nonchalantly.

"I don't actually know." She replied breezily, running her hand through her golden mane. "I mean, I've been in places like this since I was 16, so I haven't really been able to get on the 'dating scene'."

Klaus' lips twitched. "Well I hope that you one day find that special someone who can bring you onto the dating scene for the first time." With that, he closed the space between them as he leaned forward, and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, the tips of his fingers grazing against her cheekbone. Her skin was soft, and her cheeks reddened further. She was fucking adorable. Klaus knew he was in trouble, he knew he wasn't meant to be talking to other people, he knew he got too attached too quickly, he knew that it was always his downfall, he knew that he always ended up abandoned and alone and achingly empty… But Caroline; _she was different_. He knew it already. He knew that she wouldn't leave him feeling like that.

He could see her still under his touch, and her eyes widened. His heart lodged itself in his throat and he felt like he couldn't breathe, because he knew she felt it as well, their connection. Yet despite all of that, Caroline maintained a calm façade, cool under pressure, giving him a small smile and leaning back in her chair casually. "I don't know…" She started, swallowing, and regaining her wits. "I'm thinking I might just end up a celibate. You know, maybe become a woman of God."

Unsure of whether she was teasing or not, Klaus nodded, feeling his stomach drop at her statement. Feeling unable to even say anything, he peered at her curiously, hoping that she was bloody well joking. However, he got his answer soon enough when she rolled her eyes, a lazy half smile painting her lips, as she placed her hand over his, and squeezed.

" _I'm kidding_."

A blatantly relieved grin broke out across Klaus' face.

"I love nice clothes too much, and I plan on moving to California once I get out of this place." She shook her head and grimaced. "I'm pretty sure there aren't many nunneries by the beach."

The grin on Klaus' face turned into a smirk, and he perked his brows up. Stretching his legs out in front of him, Klaus prepared to bring out his secret weapon. "California? Oh, hm…." He pondered, tearing his eyes away from her suddenly curious ones, and pretending to he extremely interested in what was going on outside the barred window, or rather, what wasn't going on. But whatever, he _needed_ to remain nonchalant.

"What?" She asked, her voice pitching as she sat up straighter in her chair, looking to him urgently. "'California? Oh, hm' what?"

Biting back the ever-growing smirk from his lips, Klaus rested his head in his hand, still refusing to meet her stare. He gave a small shrug. "Oh, it's just, my family has a beach house in Santa Monica. We hardly go there, considering we live in the Hamptons, so it's empty throughout the year…" Klaus remarked casually, quickly flicking his eyes towards her to gauge her reaction.

She furrowed her brows and tilted her head at him, looking like a confused puppy and one hundred times more adorable. "What are you talking about?" Caroline questioned, seemingly not understanding what he was hinting at.

"I'd love to take you there, once we get out of here." He elaborated, now fully turning to her so he could see her fully. Much to his dismay, instead of her face breaking out into pure happiness like he had hoped, instead of her letting out a gleeful laugh, and instead of her leaping up and flinging her arms around him, Caroline instead just shifted in her seat awkwardly. An uncomfortable expression pained her face, and she looked down at her hands, her fingers playing with a loose piece of thread from her clothing.

"Oh, Klaus that's… That's so, uh, _kind_ of you…" She started stiffly, giving him a pitiful smile, and his stomach once again dropped along with face. "But… Um, yeah I mean. There's still a long way to go until… I uh am better. We'll see."

Her eyes peered up, taking in what Klaus was trying to make a stoic expression to hide his devastation, because he had once again, moved too fast. He was acting impulsively, he was over sharing and going too far, just like he normally did. Except this time it wasn't because he was too drunk to know what he was doing, it was because he thought she was special. Klaus had crossed the line but she wasn't following, he couldn't go back, it was too late.

"Oh look there's Bonnie, with Kol!" Caroline blurted out shrilly, and Klaus looked across the room to where she was pointed, and true enough, it was his brother, the person who he was supposedly looking for before he got caught up in a conversation with Caroline. Kol was towering out the small brunette, a serious expression on his face as he nodded down at her.

Klaus assumed the unusually serious expression on Kol's face was because the girl had just rejected his advances, and Klaus knew how much Kol had been gunning out for her, but then Bonnie took Kol's hand in her own and squeezed it. Always having been a good lip reader, as you needed to be when your family was constantly talking about you behind your back, Klaus could see she was saying, 'thank you'. Kol responded with 'I'm just helping you with what needs to be done'. Bonnie gave him a small smile, and left the room without a second glance.

"Well that escalated faster than I thought it-" Caroline started, trying to break the tension between them, but Klaus was already standing and moving towards his brother across the room, ignoring the what the blonde was saying. He knew he would talk to her later (they had all the time in the bloody world, after all) but he needed to discuss with his brother about the thing that apparently needed to be done.

Grabbing a taken off guard Kol by the shoulder, he steered him towards the empty sofa and shoved him down, crossing his arms and glaring at his brother.

"What is it that needs to be done?"

Kol feigned innocence, furrowing his brows and resting his hand over his heart. "Why, Nik, whatever are you going on about?" He questioned, fluttering his eyelashes with a naivety to his voice that screamed to Klaus that he knew exactly what he was 'going on' about.

Klaus just rolled his eyes, bored of his brother's antics. "I saw you talking to Bonnie, I saw her take your hand-"

"-Why don't we talk about more interesting things, Nik?" Kol cut in hastily, the guiltless look on his face quickly twisting into a devilish smirk. With his eyes turning sly and his voice deep and knowing, wiggling his eyebrows up at Klaus, Kol continued on, " _I saw you talking to Caroline_."

Klaus was almost disturbed, not at the fact that Kol saw him talking to Caroline and seemingly knew of his attraction towards her, but that Kol had just diverted the conversation away from himself. Kol, the person who wrote a 2000 word essay about himself under the title of 'Who is your hero?'; Kol, who threw himself a surprise birthday party; Kol, who had a cardboard cutout of himself in his bedroom, had changed the conversation subject from _himself_ to _Klaus_. And his reason _why_ was that talking about Klaus was more 'interesting'.

Something was definitely up.

"Kol what are you scheming with that girl?" Klaus heatedly asked his brother, who was in the middle of analyzing Caroline's body language towards him. "Because I _know_ it's something, and-"

"-Ah! Look, it's Tyler! _There_ you are!" Kol exclaimed zealously, jumping up, a face splitting grin on and his eyes comically wide. He slapped his hand on Klaus' shoulder, quickly side stepping him and backing away. " _Well_ , Nik, I always love our talks. Lets have one next week, shall we?"

Klaus was speechless as he watched his brother run off, out the door towards Tyler, who appeared to have left the room the minute he saw Kol was present. It was a curious thing indeed, to see his brother happily run off to go spend time with the roommate he had spent the last week and a half bitching about.

It was a curious thing to see Kol actually socializing with Bonnie and Tyler _at all_. They were the kind of people Kol would call peasants attempt to keep at least a 'five meter' distance from at all times as he could not risk contracting 'lower class' diseases like the common cold. They were the kind of people who actually appeared to have _morals_ ; something Kol never even tried having.

And yet, it seemed that after only a week, Kol was already changing. He was talking to others in a way that seemed to be civil, and he was almost being empathetic towards other people's feelings. It seemed that after only ten days in the damn place that Kol was already changing. And Klaus wasn't sure if he liked his new brother or not. Morality on Kol was a scary thing, and he most _definitely_ didn't want anther Elijah or Finn in the family. Klaus just hoped that Rebekah stuck with her selfish ways, they may have been annoying, but at least she wasn't a stick in the mud like Freya was.

Feeling a tug on his sleeve, Klaus realized he had zoned out for a few minutes, so he turned around and found that Caroline was looking up at him, slightly embarrassed. "Yes?" He asked, his tone more bitter than he intended.

"Listen, Klaus, I'm sorry that I-" She started, her tone apologetic, and her face downcast. Klaus felt guilt explode inside of him. He knew he was being ridiculous for being annoyed with her, he _had_ jumped up at the opportunity to take her away a little too fast, and he knew that he had the tendency to move a little faster than others.

"-Caroline, it's fine." He interrupted, his tone soft as he smiled down at her, sympathetically. "We hardly know each other and I really shouldn't have put you on the spot like that. The only one at fault here is me."

Caroline bit her her lip and looked at him thoughtfully as she hugged herself. He held her stare, finding himself not able to look away from her in a way that he never had before. Klaus decided that despite her rejection, she _was_ truly different, because she wasn't scared off. He felt the spark, and he knew that she felt it too. It was impossible to miss. Letting out a soft sigh, Caroline opened her mouth and started forming words, but before she could make a sound, she was interrupted by the sound of the cretin's voice.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" Matt Donovan stood in the doorway and yelled out through his cupped hands into the recreation room. "Anyone in my group could you please follow me! We have a group session!"

As the other patients continued on doing as they were, Klaus rolled his eyes, and Caroline gave him a small shrug. Together, along with most of the other people in their group, they followed their blonde group therapist into the pits of hell.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

"So, just in case you were wondering, we're getting an intercom set up tomorrow." Matt started, chuckling to himself. "That way, I won't have to shout, cause I'm pretty sure I'd lose my voice by next week if I did."

Everyone in the circle stared back at him blankly.

"So…" Coughing awkwardly, he glanced around the circle. "How have you been sleeping Stefan?"

The man looked at him with heavy lidded, tired eyes. "I haven't." He replied, his voice flat.

Matt started, "Is that because you were sleeping in a new bed or-"

Damon interrupted, however. "-Uh, NO. It's because he's a fucking insomniac."

"Damon." Matt stated calmly. "Can we please remember the 'no interruptions' rule?"

He huffed however, rolling his eyes. "I'll start remembering the rule once we actually have a purpose to fulfill in these torture sessions." He muttered dramatically.

Clapping his hands together, Matt smiled. "That's exactly what I was about to get to, thank you for bringing that up, Damon." He beamed, but Damon just scoffed, and crossed his arms. "I want to go around the circle, and for everyone to name one thing they want to have improved upon at the end of this month."

Looking to his left, he found Caroline, one of the tamer, more polite patients. He sighed with relief; she was a good person to start with. Standing, Caroline stepped forward slightly. "By the end of the month, I want to have not purged once." She smiled proudly, and sat back down.

"I think that's a very good, and realistic goal to start with Caroline, something you can definitely achieve." He encouraged, nodding towards the next patient.

Elena stood. " _Honestly_ , I feel fine. No. I feel _great_. I've only been here ten days, but I've met people who I would call my best friends," she smiled brightly as she glanced between Bonnie and Caroline. " _And_ I've developed good relationships with the others. This place really is amazing. I think I've finally found my fit here, and I don't think I've ever felt steadier than I ever have before. So I want that to be my goal." Elena finally announced after raving on, a face splitting grin widening her lips. "I want to stay feeling the way I am. Because it's fantastic.'

After peering at her curiously, suspicious about her animated behavior, Matt nodded, deciding he'd talk to her about it later. "I think that's a good start Elena, and I'm glad that you think you've found somewhere you can finally move forward." Matt responded, and she nodded back enthusiastically.

Beside Elena, Damon coughed loudly, gaining the attention of everyone. "Where's the little sociopath?" He inquired loudly, nodding to the empty chair.

"Kai has transferred wards after the, uh, incident." Matt replied awkwardly, as he frankly didn't exactly _know_ where Kai was. Dr. Maxfield said that they were dealing with him, and not much else. But he knew that they would want to know what was happening with Kai, so he decided to make something up. "We're doing some more behavioral analysis on him, but he should be back here by the next group session, unless we notice something." He was acutely aware of the way Bonnie's whole body hardened in her seat, and how her face darkened, when he mentioned Kai's return. Matt hoped that Kai wouldn't return, as he was too much of trouble for the other patients.

"The incident being when he attacked Judgy, or did he assault someone else?" The raven-haired man snarked back. "Because I heard about his track record and-"

Elena kicked Damon in the shin, and he stopped in his sentence. Furrowing his brows, Matt had to bite his tongue and remind himself that the man had a _mental illness_ and if he was truly competent of what he was saying he wouldn't be such an asshole. He breathed in and out slowly, and then turned to Damon. "We are meant to be setting goals for ourselves, but I think I can set one for you, and that is to be more considerate of other peoples feelings, and _not_ calling them names, or interrupting them when they are speaking. What about that?"

"I was about to say the exact same thing, Donovan." He replied, trying to hide his annoyance, pursing his lips.

"My goal is to actually care about anything that happens here." Hayley blurted out. It seemed as though she was trying very hard to have the appearance of not caring. Or maybe she was actually that way. Matt wasn't going to point anything out though, because he knew she already felt alienated enough, he didn't want to further that. Instead, he just nodded at her, and turned to the next person.

Tyler swallowed, and his eyes quickly flickered around the room. "My goal is to not have any massive violent outbursts." It seemed easy enough, and despite what he knew most people in the group thought of Tyler, Matt thought him to be probably one of the tamest people with intermittent explosive disorder he had ever encountered. Matt had truly met some animals though.

"Good one mate." Kol replied, air-nudging Tyler in the side. "I wish I could come up with gold like that, but honestly, I can't really think of any way I can improve myself."

"How about you stop being such a narcissistic piece of shit!" Tyler bellowed, knocking his chair over angrily as he stood. Matt took back what he had just thought, at the sight of Tyler's overreaction.

Standing, Matt checked through the window in the door to make sure there were nurses on standby, just in case things got violent. "Now Tyler..." He began. "You shouldn't say that kind of thing, Kol has a mental disorder just as much as you do."

"That's right, mate, you ought to be more considerate." Kol smiled wolfishly at his roommate, and Matt wanted nothing more than for him to shut up. But that didn't happen. "It also seems that you have broken the goal you set, oh, maybe fifty seconds ago."

With his hands fisted by his sides, Tyler towered over Kol, who didn't even flinch. "That's where you're wrong, _mate_ , I said I don't want to have violent outbursts. So I haven't broken my goal." He paused. "But I'm about to."

And Tyler lunged forward and grabbed onto Kol, punches, kicks, and hits of aggression and defense were being hurled out, and they were on the floor. Matt clapped his hands in horror to grab the attention of the nurses, as the other patients jumped out of their seats and away from the fighting pair. Thankfully, they came quick enough, and subdued Tyler, who was over Kol throwing punch after punch as Kol tried in vain to stop him.

Once the nurses carried Tyler away, Kol laid on the floor, moaning in pain. Matt ran to his side and knelt down, attempting to attend to his injuries. "My face… my handsome face…" Kol groaned hoarsely, causing Rebekah to snort loudly, unsympathetic, muttering, "Typical", to her blonde brother who stood besides her, watching with a skeptical expression on his face.

"Don't look at me! Call 911!" Kol continued on, now shrieking loudly and shielding his face with his hands as he curled up into a fetal position on the floor, ensuring that everyone who stood and watched couldn't see him. "I can't be seen like this… Nik! Get the surgeon who did Rebekah's nose on the phone!"

No longer amused and letting out a gasp, Rebekah held her hand over her nose. "Shut _up_ you narcissistic piece of shit!" She hissed, for once not enjoying the stares she received.

"For once Bex think about me and not you!" Kol shouted back, his muffled voice guttural. "Think about my face!"

Klaus squinted his eyes and tilted his head to the side, still suspicious. "Kol, what happened to you quoting Tina Fey saying that 'the most important rule of beauty is: who cares?'" He questioned his brother with who was still hiding away.

Just then, two more nurses finally came to take Kol away to medical, as he cried, "Tina was wrong!"

Relieved, Matt seated himself, however the other patients still stood uncertainly behind their chairs. "You can sit, guys, it's fine!" He exclaimed invitingly.

Reluctantly, Caroline and Elena returned to their seats, but the rest remained standing.

"What's going to happen to Tyler?" Bonnie asked with a hint of urgency in her voice.

Matt licked his lips. "Um…" He started, knowing exactly what the answer to it was, but unsure of whether he should tell her or not, because she, as well as the others, might not like the answer. However, he decided to be truthful, because it was better to be honest now rather than have them all find out later. "He will probably be transferred to ward D for a while."

Pursing her lips, Bonnie crossed her arms and sat back down in her seat, staring into the distance thoughtfully. Matt glanced around at the others, and it seemed no one was particularly bothered at this answer, but for Klaus, who looked relatively agitated, drumming his fingers at his sides and glaring at Bonnie distrustfully.

"Okay, everyone come on, lets resume." Matt announced, yet they all remained standing, hesitantly looking to one another. "What's wrong?" He questioned, confused as to why they weren't sitting.

When no one spoke, Rebekah stepped forward, sighing dramatically. "Honestly, Doctor Matt, you can't expect me to just go back to this group therapy session when I have just watched my brother be beaten within an inch of his life!" She cried out, gripping the fabric of her shirt that laid above her heart.

Matt frowned, and looking at the small drops of blood on the floor, shook his head thinking 'Stupid, stupid, stupid'. What was he thinking of trying to continue on with the session after the fight, they were mentally unstable people, and he knew he couldn't try pushing them too hard when it was only the beginning.

"You can't expect me to talk about my goals in life when a puddle of blood is right on the floor, constantly reminding me of my brothers assault!" She continued on, but Matt understood the message.

"Okay, okay, I get it." He muttered, looking around at all the faces. "The session is cancelled, you can all go."

And Matt stood, gathering his own papers up, and turning around, he was met with the eager face of Caroline Forbes. "Do we have to go to our dorms, or are we allowed to go to the common room?" She asked excitedly.

Matt couldn't help but feel offended over the fact that she, along with everyone else who smiled and chattered happily as they left, was so thrilled the meeting had ended prematurely. "You may go to the common room." He replied flatly, already planning ahead what he could do to try and make the group gatherings more enjoyable for everyone. Including himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could use some help, if possible, from anyone. I'm thinking that the feel of the story may start changing. Of course, the humor will always be there, but I think things will start getting darker. So, I might change my current summary to this:
> 
> "They came together as strangers who knew nothing about one another, and at first it was primarily an atmosphere of hatred between them all. They clashed. Yet, when you're locked up in a weird, inescapable place with only each other to be around, to talk to, to relate to... When bad things happen (because they always do) and when you find out awful, awful things... You end up bonding with the people you least expect. Because there's no one else there. 
> 
> And at the end, those bonds may break because nothing lasts forever. But then, there are the ones that end up meaning everything to you, the crazy ones that go against the odds, and that makes all that ever happened worth it."
> 
> I'm not sure. If you can find the time please tell me what one you prefer? It'd be really helpful. But anyways...
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter! If possible, please review and tell me your thoughts and feelings, it helps me a lot when I'm writing and struggling for inspiration and motivation. Subscribe to and/or bookmark the story if you want to know about future updates, and thank you so so so much for reading! X
> 
> **Next Chapter - Next Chapter - We'll see some of what Kai is up to in ward D. As well as that, we will see some familiar faces who will definitely become more prevalent in the story. Then, we will find out that there might be more to the fight between Tyler and Kol than meets the eye... ******


	6. Ward D

Twelve days.

Kai had been in that fucking institution for twelve days. And how long had it taken for him to get sent to the ward for dangerous patients? One day. _No_ , not even that, it was more like twenty-two freaking hours and he was already transferred to another ward.

And it wasn't even his fault. It was Bonnie's. Kai didn't _want_ to lie; he was honest with all of them in the first session, but with her the most. She seemed interested in him, or at least a little curious, so Kai thought they could… Well, he didn't know what he thought, but there was something about her that attracted him to her, like a bug to a light. So after the first day, in the recreation room, when he saw Bonnie with her nose buried in that damn book, her emerald eyes flicking quickly over every word, her hair framing her face, her teeth digging into her lower lip, he felt something spark within him that he had never felt before. He didn't know what it was, whether it was a fascination, a curiosity, or just a morbid interest in seeing what her insides looked like. Kai had no idea. He was drawn to her. And so he went to her. He was civil and truthful and himself, trying to figure out what it was about her that he couldn't resist, and what did she do in return?

She screamed.

Just like everyone else. Except the difference between Bonnie and everyone else was that he couldn't and wasn't going to give up on her so easily. After all, he had all the time in the world, didn't he? He was going to terrorize them all, but Bonnie the most. She was fun. She made him feel stuff that he had never felt before, and it was amazing.

But, first, he had to overcome the obstacle that was being in ward D. It wasn't like the ward was so bad, he had been to much worse places, it's just that he couldn't get anything done when he spent 85% of his day strapped to a bed in a padded room by himself. However there were at least other people he met during eating times that wanted to get out of there as much as he did.

"And then I said, 'we both know I could rip you to shreds with my nails, with or without these restraints on'." Katherine, the girl who bore a striking and almost eerie resemblance to Elena Gilbert but had 200 times more personality, drawled as she poked at the food on her plate with her fork. "Do you know what the bastard did?"

Mary Louise rolled her blue eyes and let out a heavy sigh. "For the third time today Katherine, _no one cares_." The blonde shot back, her voice bitter as she resumed gnawing on her lower lip, staring down her her food sullenly. She was rude and her social skills were a little rough, but Kai understood her, as she had spent the previous week in isolation from all other patients, so it was understandable that she was irritable.

"He stuck a needle in my neck!" Katherine continued on shrilly, ignoring Mary Louise and looking to Kai with an expression of indignation on her features. "When I woke up, my nails looked like this." Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she held up her hand in his face to show him her raw looking finger tips, her nails cut down so far that he could see dried blood edged around them.

Kai raised his eyebrows and cringed. "Ouch."

Katherine nodded, retracting her hand and holding it up in front of her own eyes, disgust painting her fine features as she stared at it. "I just can't stand the thought of his grubby hands on me." She responded, shuddering slightly. "Noah is one of the worst things about this place."

" _That_ , and also being tied up to a bed for most of the day, other than when we're eating and talking about our thoughts and feelings." Mary Louise butted in resentfully, attempting to make a point, but Katherine just scoffed and narrowed her eyes at the woman beside her.

Pursing her lips, Katherine crossed her arms, and titled her head. "I thought you didn't care." The thing about Katherine that Kai had learned in the past eleven days was that she could stare someone down for a very long time without so much as blinking. She had an unwavering stare, the kind that cut through even him, and he knew it could be extremely unnerving. He didn't actually know much about her, just that he wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of her. They were both very similar to each other, which was why they got along so well.

Mary Louise shot to her feet, grabbed her tray, and stormed off without a word.

With a triumphant and biting smile, Katherine turned to Kai and stuffed a forkful of the grey meat into her mouth.

Kai smirked as he drummed his fingers against the table. "You know Kitty-Kat, I'm not really one to give advice, but if you ever plan on getting out of this ward, you should probably stop with the threats." He offered, but Katherine let out a humorless laugh, letting her fork clatter to her plate loudly.

"Oh Kai. I'm twenty-six, I've been in ward D for nine years. I'm _never_ getting out of here." She replied, a grin on her lips but he could hear the resentment in her voice. She ran her hand through her waves, and stared down at her lap, her lip curling up. "Little do you know, I was shoved in here at the fruitful age of sixteen by my so called family. _Apparently_ I have a little something called hyper sexuality. They don't like that here, and after they had to abort my third pregnancy, they gave me a choice; be sterilized or go to ward D. I chose the latter, and they locked me in here, never to see the light of day again."

Rubbing at the purple bruises around his wrists, Kai nodded, the cogs in his mind already spinning. "I get why you might think that, but I believe we can help each other get out of here and back into ward A." He prompted, watching her carefully for a reaction.

She scoffed.

"Ask to move to my group."

This time, Katherine didn't scoff, and instead looked up at him, curiosity sparking in her eyes.

"Whose group are you currently in?"

"I've been in Dr. Fell's group since the beginning."

"Are you're still in _here_?" He asked, not expecting an answer. Shaking his head dolefully, Kai pushed his tray away, rested his elbows on his table and threaded his fingers together. "You haven't made any progress, she's clearly not helping you at all with your nymphomania if you're still in the ward for the psychos. You've been here and in the same group for ten years and now you want a fresh start. Say that you need a change of therapist, a change of scenery, to an environment that's more... stimulating. Say you want to go to your beloved friend Kai's group, the one lead by Matt Donovan."

Tilting her head to the side, a skeptical expression overtook her features, and she sniffed. "And why would I do that, my beloved friend Kai?" She questioned mistrustfully, just as he had expected.

Kai grinned at her. " _Because_ Matt Donovan is neither a doctor or competent, and with your manipulation skills you could easily and quickly convince him within one session that you are getting better. He'd move you to ward A in a heartbeat because he's got this kind of 'believe the best in people' thing going on." He said the last sentence with a hint of revulsion in his voice, because the guy's hope was a little sickening, but at least Kai could use it to his own advantage.

Katherine seemed to consider this. "Dr. Fell _does_ hate me, she'd take any opportunity possible to get rid of me…" She pondered with a thoughtful look into the distance, and then sharply whipped her eyes to him. "And what do _you_ get out of this?"

Giving a little shrug, Kai cracked his neck to the side. "Just say that you're not going back to ward A without me." It was simple enough, he knew that the only way he would get back into ward A was if someone else vouched for him. And right now, Katherine was the only person who could and would do that.

Letting out a dramatic sigh, she nodded. "Fine, I'll do it. But only because you asked so nicely." She discreetly reached across the table and brushed her fingers over his, a flirtatious glint in her brown eyes, but he didn't react to her touch. Instead, he was lost in his thoughts, thinking about what he'd say to Bonnie when he saw her again. He couldn't wait to see the fearing glint in her eyes when she saw him again, to see the way her body shook, and to see how her breathing quickened. It was everything he had seen when they last interacted and he loved that he already had that affect on her, no matter how much she tried to fight it, she couldn't.

Katherine stood up after a few moments of Kai being unfeeling to her affection, and grabbed her tray. This snapped Kai out of his trance. "Where're you going?" He examined.

She widened her eyes at him and gave him a little shake of her head. "Well, if I'm going to transfer groups, I should probably show up to this weeks one-on-one therapist session with Dr. Fell to, you know, talk to her about it." Katherine responded slowly and sarcastically, then gave him a thoughtful look. "Wow, you really are just a pretty face, aren't you?"

Kai smirked at up her insult. "Yep, the fairest of them all."

Katherine let out a reluctant smile as she scoffed, then turned away and sashayed off, leaving Kai sitting by himself in the room full of the other crazier, less talkative patients. He left soon after her, not wanting to get caught up in a conversation with Oscar, who always tried to bite him. He kept quiet as Genevieve escorted him back to his room. Kai didn't want to annoy her, choosing to behave himself and create the appearance of docility, thus making it more believable that he was better and eligible to be back in ward A. He could see from the corner of his eye she was peering at him nervously, but he just flashed her a friendly smile as she unlocked the door to his room.

"See you at dinner." He sang out at her, lifting his hand into a wave, happy as she slammed the door in his face, because it meant that he wasn't going to be put into his bed restraints. At the sound of the lock clicking on the other side of the door, Kai turned around, and hardly suppressed his laughter at the sight that met his eyes.

Tyler Lockwood. On the previously empty bed that was adjacent to his. Tightened in restraints. His knuckles were bruised purple and his face was knocked up, he had stitches on his lip and forehead, grazes across his cheek and chin, a black eye, and was jerking his body around on the bed, staring at Kai with flames of fury and horror bright in his eyes.

"Oh, this is _rich_." Kai chortled, wiping away the tear that pricked his eye, and he almost thought he hear Tyler growl as he seemed to struggle against the leather around his wrists and ankles. Watching the man for several moments, Kai let out another laugh, still amused. "You look like a dog pulling against their leash because they want to chase after a car or something. Look! Look at that hungry spark in your eyes. Gosh, Ty, if you could see yourself. If only I had a mirror, unfortunately they don't let any kind of potentially sharp objects in here, but if only!"

Jumping onto his bed, Kai rested his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling, a shit-eating grin still splitting his face in two. Tyler, like the dog he was, still continued to writhe in his bed, seemingly thinking that he could break the ties around his wrists, and Kai almost wanted him to. He was curious what would happen if the man got his paws on him.

"So…" Kai began, turning onto his side and looking at Tyler, who glared back at him. "What got _you_ in good old ward D?" It was a rhetorical question that Kai already knew the answer to, because, duh. Look at the guy, he looked like he had been beaten to a pulp, but by the looks of his knuckles, his opponent must've gotten pretty roughed up as well.

However, Tyler being as thick headed as he was didn't realize Kai was being sarcastic. "I got into a fight." He muttered harshly, finally giving up getting out of the restraints out of frustration, exhaustion, or both.

Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Kai perked his brows up at the man across from him and gave him a dimpled grin. "Well, lucky for you, we get to be roomies!" He exclaimed excitedly, sitting up and clapping his hands.

Tyler looked at him with loathing. " _I know what you did_." He snarled abruptly, baring his teeth with fire in his beady eyes.

Kai sighed, plopping back onto his bed. "Okay, okay. I'll admit it." He admitted. "I took one of your pillows, but that was when the bed was unoccupied. Sorry not sorry, I'm not giving it back. These beds are so damn uncomfortable and-"

"-I KNOW YOU TRIED TO KILL YOUR FAMILY!" Tyler screamed savagely out in the middle of Kai's sentence, shaking in rage, and then it suddenly _all made sense_ ; Tyler's apparent hate for him despite Kai actually never having spoken to him before that day. Tyler knew what Kai had attempted, and probably thought it was, _wrong_ , or something. But Kai didn't actually care.

"Cool." He responded, clicking his tongue. "But I'm still not giving you back the pillow."

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE FUCKING PILLOW!" The raven-haired man continued on with his shrieking, and this time Kai did roll his eyes, already tired of Tyler's whining. "YOU DON'T BELONG HERE! YOU'RE A CRIMINAL AND ATTEMPTED MURDERER AND I WANT YOU GONE! WE ALL DO! THAT'S WHY I'M HERE! I PURPOSELY GOT INTO A FIGHT SO I COULD TELL YOU THAT YOU NEED TO GO…"

Kai tuned out the man as he continued on rambling, just like he used to do with his siblings. It was hopeless; Kai couldn't leave whether he wanted to or not. And _boy_ , did he want to, but it wasn't his choice to make. His family locked him up there the minute he was released from jail. He knew he would he would be in that place for the rest of his life, unless he broke out of there and lived as a fugitive, which he wasn't completely against… But that would be a lot of work, and it was so much more fun to watch people (Tyler) squirm around him.

Tyler was clearly uncomfortable sharing the same breathing space as an attempted murderer and former juvenile delinquent. Kai understood that some people had morals and thought murder and hurting others was wrong. However that didn't mean he cared. Tyler had purposely got himself into ward D in a useless attempt to tell Kai to leave the institution. But it was just that; useless, he achieved absolutely nothing by doing it, and he would probably be there for at least a few weeks before he was moved back to ward A. If Kai actually had the ability to feel empathy, he would've felt it towards Tyler in that moment, because he went through a lot of effort for nothing.

However, that wasn't the case, and in in all actuality, Kai found it quite amusing. Tyler thrashed around on the bed, his face red hot, a vein popping out in his neck, yelling out at the top of his lungs so loudly that Kai was surprised a nurse had come in to sedate him yet. The man looked completely ridiculous.

"…AND BONNIE! AFTER SHE FOUND OUT THAT-"

"-Wait what?" Perking up at the mention of Bonnie's name, Kai looked over to Tyler who stared back at him with incredulous, wild eyes as he heaved every breath. "What about Bonnie?" He asked again when Tyler didn't respond, more urgency to his voice because Bonnie was actually someone he had a curiosity about.

Lifting himself to his elbows, Tyler leaned as far forward as possible towards Kai, and through gritted teeth, hissed, "She is hell bent on getting you the fuck out of here and away from us. We both are. This was all my idea."

Kai knew he should've been disheartened at that. But that just made him all the more intent on getting to her. He felt his lips twitch, and he swallowed, his mind ticking as he thought of what he would say and do to her when he finally got back to ward A. The thought made his skin tingle and his heart hammer against his ribs in a way it never had before. It was exhilarating.

" _You make her sick_."

His lips twisted into a smile, and Kai turned to his roommate. "Perfect, that'll make it all the more satisfying once I finally get to her."

Tyler gasped loudly, his face being overtaken by pure and burning rage as he jerked himself about in the bed. "YOU'RE MEANT TO BE LEAVING! I'LL TELL THEM WHAT YOU TRIED TO DO! I'LL TELL THEM YOU'RE A FELON! THIS ISN'T A PRISON FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE! IT'S A MENTAL RECOVERY CENTER!" The man resumed his screaming, and Kai just let out a sigh and rolled his eyes.

"Listen Tyler- Tyler? Ty, Ty, Ty? Ohhhhh Ty-ler? TYLER LOCKWOOD!"

With horror in his eyes at the uttering of his full name, Tyler stopped and stared at Kai.

"Well, first things first, I've served my time, and they already _know_ about my past, you idiot. Why else do you think I arrived here in a straitjacket?" Kai snorted as he shook his head at the memory. "Second, the reason _why_ I arrived here like that is because I wasn't admitted here voluntarily-"

"- _I already know that, you idiot_." Tyler hissed back childishly.

"Then what made you think coming here and telling me to leave would do any good?" Kai asked the genuine question that had been irking him. Did Tyler have other motives, or was he really _that_ stupid that he thought he would come to ward D as a 'double agent', or whatever the fuck he thought he was doing, and tell Kai to 'be gone'… Frankly, it wasn't much of a question, because from the look of realization on the man's face to Kai's general knowledge of him, it was clearly the latter. "Jesus, you really are stupid."

Kai knew that Tyler knew he had really screwed up when he didn't respond.

"I can't leave even if I want to, which I do. But I hate to break it to you- well, actually, I don't… Anyways, I'm not going anywhere, Ty." The man snarled at the nickname, which only made Kai vow to use it more often. "So you kinda just jumped, not fell, _jumped_ , into an bottomless hole by getting yourself into this ward."

"I thought you hated metaphors." Tyler muttered petulantly, staring up at the ceiling, still.

Kai held his hand to his chest, a flattered expression on his features. "Oh, Ty, I'm so heart warmed by your attention to details about me. And you're right. I don't like metaphors… When other people use them. It's confusing. But I use them all the time."

"You're a hypocrite."

"I attempted to murder my family, do you really think I of all people care about being a hypocrite?"

Tyler was unresponsive.

"Anyhoo, you're going to be stuck here for at least two to three weeks. _I_ , however, with the help of my friend Katherine, am going to get out of ward D and into A within a couple of days. So, in reality, you're kinda screwed, because, now everyone else, especially Bonnie, will be completely defenseless with you and your martyr-ism gone."

Tyler was silently fuming, and it made the next words Kai was about to say all that much more sweet.

"I always win. _No one can match me_. Not even the people who know me best, and that's why I'm here, and you're stuck with me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't say thank you enough for reading! I hope that I wrote Kai alright and did his character justice, and I hope that you liked Mary Louise but also Katherine in particular, because as you can see, she's going to show up in a lot of future chapters. I wasn't sure whether to write this chapter as having Kol or Tyler in ward D, but in the end I decided upon Tyler as he was the one that instigated the fight, his stupidity makes for more of Kai mocking him (which is fun to write), and it gives me a reason to sideline him a bit so I can focus on other characters and relationships more.
> 
> Please if you have the time, review and tell me what you think of this chapter and the story so far! Readers opinions are really important for me moving forward. I appreciate every single comment people have left so far on this story as they help and inspire me push on and work through any troubles I have when writing. They mean so much to me. Or just kudos if you liked what I've done so far! Subscribe if you want to know about future updates! Once again thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. X
> 
> **Next Chapter - Will be the familial visits focusing on various different characters as they are reunited with the ones they love. Some familiar faces will show up. ******


	7. I'm Not Crazy

Week two and Elena was doing great. No, even better than great, she was thriving. She had never felt so good, every single nerve cell in her body tingled with each and every moment. It was the first time she had everything she could've ever wanted, she had Damon, she had Bonnie, she had Caroline, she had Matt; she had all of them. Thinking of the past, thinking of those times where she thought she was completely and absolutely fulfilled, she shook her head because it can't have been true, as she didn't feel the way she felt now and it was the most magnificent feeling ever.

She could leave this place. She could, she really could. Elena was better now, Matt had worked wonders on her, she had figured out her issues with her family, with Jeremy and Alaric, and all the problems she had within herself. They were gone. Poof. She was fine. She was fixed. She was euphoric.

"What's got you all smiley. Sunshine?" Damon questioned as he sauntered over to her.

Looking up from the magazine page she had read a thousand times, she grinned even wider at the raven haired man who had a greater impact upon her in two weeks than anyone she had ever met before. "Nothing…" Elena trailed off, basking in the shivers Damon just resting his hand on her shoulder sent through her body. "Just waiting for Jer and Alaric to arrive, I can't wait to see them!"

Slowly tilting his head to the side, Damon peered at her curiously; his electric eyes squinted just so slightly, as if he might be able to see her in a different way. "You seem optimistic about their visit, a much different tune to what you were singing a couple of days ago." He began, thinking of the nervous wreck she was, shaking so much that she hardly noticed the tears that pricked at her eyes, and hyperventilating to the rate that a nurse asked if she was all right. All Elena could do was ramble on about how Jeremy was going to react to her, how he would be jealous and spiteful and want to ruin her progress. Considering her previous near breakdown, Damon couldn't help but be a bit skeptical when seeing her cheery attitude. "Are you sure you're okay? You seem a bit…"

His disbelief prompted an immediate reaction from Elena. "What?" She spat out, her back stiffening from its relaxed slump to a rigid board. A heavy crease between her brows formed and she pursed her lips, clenched her jaw, and tightened her fists, as if readying for a fight. "Happy? Joyful? Excited? Well considering I'm going to see my brother and former guardian who I haven't seen for a month I'm pretty sure that's the right reaction! But I guess considering you're so narcissistic and vain you don't comprehend anyone's joy other than your own and-"

"-No, no, no, no!" Damon cut in before she said anything else. "No, Elena, no. Just-" He didn't understand her sudden defensiveness, her sudden but absolute change in personality and everything. It stumped him. He didn't like it, her vicious side. And he especially didn't like it when she was attacking him. But he wasn't about to go into it because he first and foremost didn't know how, and he also didn't want her to loose it again. He'd only known her two weeks, so it probably wasn't his place to ask her about it, that and he also didn't want to lose the only person who seemed to tolerate him, other than Stefan of course. "Never mind, Elena. It doesn't matter. I want you to be happy. Just. Forget it, okay?"

And like a chameleon, she transformed back into the person she was but a moment ago. Her face relaxed into a loose smile, she ran her hand through her hair and she rolled her shoulders back before slouching once more. "Umm…" She hummed, her coffee colored eyes taking in the space around them. "Who's the blonde over there with Stefan?"

Rolling his eyes, Damon suppressed a sound of distaste, and waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, her. That's just Lexi, Stefan's best friend, guardian angel, sensei, protector of the realm yadda yadda yadda. She's the one who put me in here, so I'm not about to go over and say hi."

"Damon… If she had never put you in here, then you would've never met me." Elena responded, hushed but heard, her hand half-mindedly clutching onto his. And her skin tingled, no, stung, as it always did when they touched. But it wasn't the kind of sting that made you jerk away in reaction; it was the kind of sting that made you hold on harder and harder. Damon's heart raced in his chest and a knot tied itself in his throat and he was speechless.

It was true. She was right. It was because of Lexi that he had met Elena. And if it weren't for her, then he would still be wandering around, mindless, half drunk at the street corner bar he tended, smelling of cigarettes and rum and shit, with no purpose. Lexi had done that for him. God he fucking hated her for everything but loved her for it.

"And to be honest, it's only been such a short time, but I know I would go insane if you weren't here."

"I'm glad I'm here I've-" He had never said such words to anyone before, he had never felt his heart move at such a rate, never felt his tongue tie and never felt the world stop around him and yet… "I'm glad I'm here."

The half grin they both offered each other in response made each other's day.

Endorphins soared through Elena's body as Damon's eyes trailed down her face and onto her lips. Blood pumping in her ears was the only thing she heard, and he was all she could see. That was, until they were interrupted by the one who had brought them together.

"Hey! Lover boy!" Lexi bellowed out from across the room, a smirk on her lips and a twinkle in her eyes, and Damon was irked to see that Stefan was sharing that exact same look. "Get on over here!"

Elena couldn't help but let out a laugh, one that was inelegant and hideous, but she thankfully slapped her hand over her mouth and smothered it before Damon could hear the rest of it. Then, she patted him with that same hand. "Go, Damon." She ordered softly.

He let out a grunt and shook his head.

"I think it's the least you could do… She did-"

"-Alright, alright, alright!" Damon snapped, rolling his eyes and taking a dramatic breath, before turning around and begrudgingly walking towards the tormenting two who beckoned him over. Elena grinned as she watched him walk off, a million images of what her life, their life together, would be like once they finally gained their freedom. She could just feel it, the fresh air on her tongue, the feeling of flowers under her fingers, the sun so bright it burned her eyes. Everything would be perfect.

It could only come soon enough as well, she was clearly improving, moving out of her slump and going even further. Nothing could bring her down now. And Damon, well, if Elena was around she knew he would be fine. She could keep him in shape, and he could hold her up high. They complemented each other in every way.

She had been smiling so hard her lips hurt, so it was a good thing Alaric and Jeremy, especially Jeremy, walked in, because the smile accidently slipped right off her face, but not before her little brother could make a comment. That comment.

"She's doing it again."

Alaric nondescriptly nudged the kid sharply in the ribs, but he just shook his head dismissively. Elena quickly plastered a grin on her face and rose to give them a hug, which Alaric accepted with a look of relief, but Jeremy declined when he just plopped down on the seat across from hers. She noticed his hair had grown longer, his bangs pricking at his eyes in a messy mop. He was also dressing darker, looking paler, with bloodshot eyes and bruises beneath them that reminded her of Stefan's insomnia.

He looked ill.

"How are you, Jer?" Elena asked immediately, softening her eyes as she looked at him, worry pooling at the bottom of her stomach. "You don't look so well…"

Jeremy almost snarled as he glared up at her from beneath his hair. "Why'd you even bother asking if you were just going to answer your own question anyway?" He shook his leg as if anxious to get out of there and crossed his arms over his chest tightly, his jaw permanently clenched.

He was doing it again. That thing. The thing where when she was doing so well, so well that she was almost ready to reenter the real world, he'd try to bring her down as much as possible. But she wouldn't let him do that. She wouldn't and couldn't, because Elena was so close. In only two weeks she was feeling better than she ever had before.

"So Elena." Rick started, trying to ease the tension that was quickly growing, and she couldn't have been more grateful. "How are you? How is the new center, do you think it's, uh, doing good things for you?" He continued on, looking at her in a way that could be described as a curious peer, but she ignored it and answered.

"Oh Rick! I'm doing so well! I don't think I've ever felt so good! I mean, I have all these friends, Bonnie, and Caroline and even Rebekah!" She leaned forward and grabbed onto Rick's hand, once again ignoring the strangely crestfallen expression on his face. "Oh, and this guy, his name is Damon. He's just so great. Every one is great, I just feel like God or whoever is up 'there' is finally giving me my retribution for all of my suffering and-"

"-Like I said." Jeremy cut in, his voice flat and his eyes judgmental. "She's doing it again."

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Enzo sat by the window, staring out with blank eyes at the patients who walked hand in hand with their loved ones. As he had been there for only two weeks, he wasn't yet allowed to go into the gardens. There was a waiting period, 'trust must be earned'. But it wasn't like he would've gone out there anyway; he found the way nature was so infused with life absolutely suffocating, because it just reminded him of how much he wanted to be gone, gone from the people around him and gone from Earth.

But he wasn't allowed that pleasure because there was supposedly some 'chemical imbalance' in his head that made him feel that way. As a result he was broken, but he could be 'fixed'. He knew that was bullshit. All of it. Bullshit. There was nothing wrong with not wanting to live anymore; there was something wrong with him having that ability taken away from him, however.

Free will was all he had had left, and now even that was taken away from him, and he was nothing. He had nothing left. Enzo was tired, tired of the hollow feeling in his chest, tired of the ache in his body, and most of all, tired of those small moments of happiness he sometimes felt, those small moments that made him laugh but then feel so, so guilty because he wasn't allowed to be happy.

He didn't deserve happiness, he deserved nothing. And seeing all the families that had come to visit his fellow patients reminded him of the blatant reality of that statement.

"Who's coming to visit you?"

Looking towards the perky blonde source of the question, he frowned at her beaming smile and bright eyes. Caroline looked radiant and happy. He hated it. "No one." He muttered, twisting away from her and back to the stark sun that burned his eyes.

"Oh."

It was the pitiful reaction he heard all the time. The sorry sound people made when they found out about Maggie, when they saw the scars on his wrists, when they asked him why he had been in the hospital. He had been in the ER five times. It was five times he had attempted to do it and it was five more failures to add to his record. He hated the pity because it not only reminded him of his failures, but also that people felt empathy towards him, which was something he didn't want nor deserve. "Go away, Caroline." He barked, when he felt her presence still hovering behind his shoulder.

"Enzo I-" She placed a gentle hand on his arm, which he violently jerked away from, not even bothering to look back at her and hoping she would get the message. However she didn't, as she exhaled deeply, and continued on. "I'm sorry that no one is coming to visit you. But I just want you to know that there are people out there that care about you."

Enzo was quiet, feeling his stomach turn to knots and his heart jump into his throat as her words entered his head. Caroline was pure and golden, a ray of sunshine whose mere presence cast warmth upon his back. She had no idea. She was so wrong, but he didn't even have the strength to tell her, because he was weak, just like always.

"Matt cares…" She said softly. "We all care, Enzo. I care about you. I want you to get better; we all deserve to feel better about ourselves than we currently do. I'm just beginning to realize that, and I hope you do as well. But in the meantime, always remember that I care about you. It's only been two weeks but I do, I care. I'll be here for you when you need me, just keep that in mind, Enzo, alright?"

Caroline's shoes clicked on the tiled floor as she walked away when he didn't respond, and with her exit disappeared the small ounce of warmness Enzo felt. Back to the cold, back to the nothing that was numb. He detested it, those periods of time when he felt nothing but the air in his lungs. It was times like this that he almost longed for the aching pain that his grief and depression put him in. The agony where he could do nothing but roll up into a ball and fall apart.

Enzo was quiet when he was being torn to pieces, he couldn't make any sound when the screaming in his bones was so loud and so bad. It was so bad. God, it was awful. Every single time was worse than the next, but he deserved it, he did. He deserved every single second of pain those periods of time put him through.

Yet, like the selfish shit he was, although he preferred the pain, Enzo always found it easier to feel nothing than to feel something. He hated himself for it.

"That's bullshit, you know."

He didn't even see she had pulled up a chair and was sitting beside him until she said it.

"Caroline doesn't care, Matt doesn't either. No one cares." Valerie continued on while Enzo peered at her spitefully despite knowing the truth of her words. "She's only saying that kind of stuff because she doesn't know what to say. But when she's out of here and you're not, let me be the first to tell you that you're not going to be getting any visits from her." She glanced to the side, her pasty blue eyes giving him a knowing look, before she looked out the window and ran her fingers through her ginger strands of hair, then completely changing the subject. "Anyways, what's so good about the view here anyway that's got you staring out her for hours-"

"-Sod off, will you." Enzo muttered, before twisting around so his back was to her. "I'm not in the mood."

She let out a huff, and he could almost hear her roll her eyes. "I'm going to take a guess that you haven't got any visitors coming to see you?" Valerie masterfully predicted, then letting out a short and sour-sounding laugh. "Me neither."

Deciding that telling her to go away wouldn't work (it hadn't with Caroline, and they both seemed to have an irritant curiosity about him, for some reason); Enzo went down the path of completely ignoring her. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work as she continued on talking.

"I've never had any one visit me here, ever. And I've been here since I was twenty, which is seven years. For the first few years I used to get really depressed during the familial visiting times, but after a year and a half I got used to the fact that no one on the outside cares about me." The redhead talked with a strange enthusiasm in her voice, even though her story was sad. But Enzo noted it down to her desensitizing herself to her situation. He knew that well. "Even before here, when I was beat up in my own home by my boyfriend Julian, so badly mind you that I miscarried my baby and was sent to hospital, no one visited me. So I don't actually know why I got so upset during those times because I knew that I wasn't going to get any visitors and…"

There came the sadness. Her voice turned hoarse and raw upon the word miscarried, and Enzo knew that was her kryptonite. The one thing that she couldn't be numb to no matter how hard she tried. He had his own kryptonite as well. He could talk about his incredibly shitty childhood, his near death experience with severe influenza, even all of his bids at suicide, whilst feeling absolutely nothing, but the one thing, the one person, that tripped him up was Maggie. Always, always, Maggie.

"Was that your second or third attempt?"

Enzo was stroking at his scars without even trying. He did that sometimes when he was thinking. It reminded him of everything he was. "What makes you think it wasn't my first?" He asked without looking, deciding to humor her.

Valerie leaned forward into his sight, pulling up her sleeves to reveal scars of her own, matching his in manner, albeit a little more jagged and messy. "No one ever goes for the wrists first. Too painful, and it's harder to cut through skin than you think. People want to die quick and easily, and this is too slow and hard." She elaborated matter-of-factly.

"They were my third." He answered, his voice hollow. Numb. "What about you?"

"My second. The first was death by carbon monoxide poisoning. Foiled by my mother who was 'checking up on me'." She responding, her everything, expression, posture, tone, mirroring his. "What about you, Enzo?"

'What about me?' Enzo thought.

And he looked at her.

A flicker.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

"It's nice to see you're all well and- Oh my… Kol, what happened to your face?"

"He got into a fight." Rebekah responded to Elijah's dumb question, a hint of glee in her voice. Kol glared at her, malice in his eyes, and then at Freya who couldn't resist a smirk as she joined Rebekah on the sofa.

Finn gave an idle shrug as he sat across from her. "I see no difference in his appearance." He muttered, crossing his arms, making it extremely clear that he hadn't come to visit them voluntarily, but it was probably Elijah and Freya who dragged him there instead. Kol desperately wished they hadn't… So did Rebekah and Klaus. No one really got along with Finn, but Kol did the least. He found Finn depressing, and that was saying a lot considering they were in a mental institution. However just like at home, Kol wasn't going to let Finn bring him down.

"I wear it as a badge of honor." He announced proudly, smiling so wide he could almost feel the stich on his lip split. Blood pooled in his mouth, but he continued on grinning, almost manically, anything to show Finn that his comments didn't bother him.

"You have no honor, bro-"

"-How are you all doing?" Elijah cut through Finn's retort quickly, glancing around at their faces. "Made any friends?"

Rebekah scoffed loudly. Klaus picked at his cuticles. Kol flopped back in his seat. The three were quiet.

All six of them stared at each other for many moments, each waiting for the other to say something. The divide between the incarcerated siblings and the free ones was clear, and a quiet tension quickly built up in the atmosphere. Kol wanted nothing more than to run away.

Fortunately, the silence was shattered when the quiet murmuring of other patients and their families surrounding them was overtaken by the sound of a foreign voice yelling cruel words. All siblings turned their attention away from each other and towards the source of the screaming, and Kol wondered who the hell thought it was a good idea to have a tantrum amongst mentally unstable people.

All in the room directed their eyes towards where the shouting was coming from, and Kol saw Elena was grimacing away into the wall as a teenage boy with dark floppy hair and sad wet eyes, presumably her brother, continued on bellowing a few teary words, that were thick with emotion from the past, before storming off and out the door, just as a few nurses arrived to see what the commotion was about. An older man laid a gentle hand on Elena's shoulder, whispered a few words to her, to which she responded with a small nod as tears trickled from her eyes, and then he ran out the room after her brother. When he was gone, Elena shriveled away into herself, and Kol could see her body shuddering as she wracked silent sobs.

God, how Kol hated family drama, whether it was with his own or not.

"Well that didn't take long." Rebekah commented, spite in her voice, turning away back to her family when Bonnie excused herself from her visitor, and she and Damon rushed to Elena's side to console her. Kol knew Rebekah didn't like Elena, he didn't really like her himself. But that was just because she was boring; Rebekah didn't like Elena because she was more popular than her. It was funny, really…. Well, at least, it was to Kol.

"What are you going on about?" Klaus questioned.

Rebekah blew a strand of hair away from her face and raised her blonde brows. "She had been going on and on to me for the past week about how worried she was that he brother would get angry with her and how he would be jealous of the fast progress she had been making." She shook her head flippantly, pursed her lips, and before anyone could make a comment upon what she revealed, Rebekah continued on. "Enough about that wench! Now, Freya, why don't I give you a tour of the premises?" She proposed with a wicked grin on her lips and a knowing look.

Freya, of course, mirrored the exact expression, and nodded. "Why, of course sister. Let us have some girls talk and leave our brothers to… be civil with one another." She said it like it was suggestion, but it was more of a warning as she grazed her sharp and authoritarian eyes over them. Then they were off, arm in arm with each other, already giggling into their hands as they made their way towards the door leading out to the dining room.

And the silence was back.

But this time, it was only a few moments, not minutes, before it was broken.

Finn abruptly stood up, and smoothing his hands down his clothes, he looked down his nose at his brothers, and said with a curled lip, "I think I may join them." He declared disdainfully, and turned away and followed after them before any one could object, although it wasn't like they were planning to anyway.

"Enjoy the girls talk, brother!" Kol called out after him. Finn didn't even spare him a second glance.

Rolling his eyes, Elijah scolded, "Kol, stop aggravating Finn. It's-"

"-So, Elijah, how long are you three down in Virginia for?" Klaus cut through, asking the question with an accusatory tone, for some reason. "I don't want you to disadvantage yourself by coming down to visit us. As we all know, your job is a priority."

"Yes," Kol added, deciding to jump on the bandwagon, "or perhaps you should check yourself in here? Workaholism, is it called?" Klaus and Kol both glanced to each other, nodded, and then looked to Elijah, who looked uncomfortable as he was put on the spot.

Letting out a subtle sigh, Elijah rubbed his hand over his face. "Listen, you two. It wasn't my decision to put you in here. You know that, it was mother and father who both-"

"What?" Kol interrupted, his jovial and joking tone taking a sharp turn into one that was absolutely serious. His dark eyes stared Elijah down and Klaus noticed his knuckles turning white as he gripped at the arms of his chair. It was rare that Kol was serious, even more so when he was angry, which he clearly was. "It was mother and father who both made the decision to lace our evening meals with some depressive agent to knock us out completely? How did the other patrons of the restaurant react when Bekah, Nik and I's heads all fell down into our meals? Huh, 'Lijah?"

His voice had raised to a single decibel below a yell and he was now standing, towering over the seated and suited Elijah, who stared up at him with an unreadable expression, the one he normally masked his features with when he could hardly believe what was happening. Kol, on the other hand, had his teeth bared in a snarl, his brows twisted together and his lips curled as if each word he said was as bitter as the next. Klaus was matching his elder brother and remaining stoic and silent, because while he was vehemently on Kol's side, he didn't want to join in on the scene his little brother was quickly making. Yet he wouldn't stop it either. Elijah needed to know what he had let happen to them.

"I'm sure they probably thought, 'what in god's name is happening with that psychotic family? Why is that mother continuing on with her meal as her three children inhale the leftovers of their dinner?' Why would mother and father want to make such a scene of locking their children away in a nuthouse, anyway? Why would they want to tarnish their precious reputation?" Inching forward, Kol was starting to attract more and more attention. Surrounding conversations drained away, heads turned to the disturbance and quiet cut through the room, but for the sound of Kol's voice. "Oh! You know what, it probably doesn't matter! The Mikaelson drug lords don't care what anyone thinks of them!"

Elijah's eyes widened and even Klaus knew Kol had taken it too far. He stood and grabbed his younger brother's shoulder. "Kol keep your voice down." He hissed in his ear. However Kol just viciously jolted away from Klaus' touch.

"We don't belong here Elijah any more than you do! We're not crazy! We're not! I'm not crazy, Elijah! I'm not!" He continued on, his words quick so it sounded like a rant, but pleading as if he was trying to convince Elijah of it, or perhaps just himself. "I do care about other people, I swear! Just-"

As Klaus made another attempt to calm his brother down, Kol went a step further and swung his elbow up into the blonde's face, causing a crack to sound through the air and blood to immediately start squirting from his nostrils. And despite the blood, despite Klaus' curses of 'shit, fuck, fuck, Kol, what the fresh hell?', despite gasps sounding in the room and the noise of hurried footsteps, despite Elijah finally jumping to his feet, part in worry of Klaus and part in worry of Kol trying for him… Despite all of that. Kol continued on with his desperate plea. Even as the white clad attendants dragged him away kicking.

"I'm fine! I'm not crazy! Just sign me out, and you can see, I swear 'Lijah, I can show you! I swear please! Brother, please! I beg of you now plea-"

His voice was cut off by the sound of a slamming door.

A nurse came forward to try to attend to Klaus' bleeding nose, but he just shrugged the woman off, wiping at the blood dripping down his face with the back of his sleeve and rubbing at his jaw with his other hand.

"Klaus, you are bleeding profusely and I think your jaw could have a fracture, I must to take you to the infirmary." The nurse insisted, trying to grab onto his arm and yet he stayed put, stubborn, and shook his head.

"Don't worry love, it's just a little bloody nose and a minor dislocation." He retorted, turning away back to his older brother, but not without saying one last thing that would make her stop pestering him and scurry away. "Nothing I haven't had to deal with from my father before."

With a resounding crack, he jerked his jaw back into position, and pinched his nostrils to stop the flow of blood, sitting back down with a resounding sigh. His eyes flickered up to his older brother, who remained standing, completely and utterly motionless. He stared into the distance with blank black eyes, his chest barely moving with each breath he may or may not have been taking.

Klaus would've almost been worried about Elijah's almost catatonic state if he wasn't already worrying about Kol. Although he sometimes hated his brother with his whole, although Kol had put him through more than he was probably worth, and although Kol was a shit most of the time and had never thanked him for all he had done, Klaus cared for his youngest brother deeply. And, thus, he was worried about Kol.

There were only two other times he had seen Kol act in such a freaked manner; the first being when he was dragged away to rehab at seventeen for his cocaine addiction, and the second being when he was dragged away from Davina at her successful inquiry into getting a restraining order against him after he had committed domestic violence on her. He claimed that 'coke is the only thing keeping me breathing and taking it away will surely kill me', and that 'I didn't mean to hit you, I was just drunk and you were saying cruel words, but I know you love me'.

This time. Klaus didn't know what had gotten Kol so panicked and-

"Tatia wants a divorce."

Klaus stilled. Air stopped moving through his lungs. His heart stopped beating in his chest. His world stopped turning around him. His mind could only think of her. The one who hurt him most.

"She's leaving me."

Klaus' world slowly drained away with Elijah's three-worded comment because here came his downfall and…

Oh.

No.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my lord what can I say? I'm a piece of shit. Sorry for the spontaneous hiatus. I've been so busy during the past few months with my finals, and then I went away to Southern Africa for the beginning of the summer and didn't have access to internet, and was too busy looking at animals to even write. And now I'm visiting family and am still way busier than I thought I'd be. But I decided to spend as many nights in bed as possible writing until I could no longer, and this resulted. Hopefully the next chapter won't have such a long wait!
> 
> But really, please if you have the time, review and tell me what you think of this chapter and the story so far! I appreciate every comment all readers have left so far as they help and inspire me to push on and work through any troubles I have when writing. They mean so a lot. Subscribe and/or bookmark if you want to know about future updates, or kudos if you haven't already and really liked the chapter! Once again thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. X
> 
> **Next Chapter - Hayley is moved to a separate room to Bonnie and Caroline, but doesn't know why. The isolation tears open old wounds for her, and then to top it all off, she sees the reason, or more like, who's the reason, why she was singled out from the other two. And it's not good. Bonnie has a one-on-one therapy session with Matt and you'll find out the reason why she has PTSD. ******


	8. A Slight Sting And Pinch

Hayley didn't know why they moved her from her dorm with Bonnie and Caroline to one by herself, but she didn't care. She liked being alone, and not having to put up with their endless talking was great. However, while it had only been a couple of hours since she was moved, she already knew the one thing she hated the most about her new room. And that was the silence that night brought.

Ever since she could remember, she had shared a room with others. God, how she had hated not ever having her own space, not having somewhere where she could completely drop her guard and be herself. Yet, she had gotten used to it all; having to constantly clean up after others who lived as though they had no pride in their surroundings (her disadvantage was that she did), suffering through the abuse from bigger and stronger kids that often ensured, and the sound of other living beings at night time. The breathing, the snoring, the teeth grinding, rustling, sleep talking, walking, crying.

It reminded her that they were all in the same boat. Orphans, totally alone, moved from house to house, forced to room with people they barely knew, until they eventually turned 18 and got kicked out entirely because they'd have aged out of the system. It was shit, her time in the system, yet at least every night she knew that she wasn't the only one who had it bad. Although she was alone, she wasn't completely alone.

And it was during that time she was alone, but not completely alone, that she met the love of her life.

Jackson. The man who had loved her more than anyone ever could and would, the man who would protect her from everything and anything, the man who had given her Hope. Only for everything to be torn away.

Staring into the dark of her room, Hayley cupped where her stomach used to bulge with her Hope. A knot tied itself in her throat as she relived the sensation of having her baby torn away from her hands, of being told she would be an incompetent mother, of being informed her child would live the exact same shitty life as she had and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

And then Jackson died and-

Shit.

She wouldn't even think about it. She hadn't since it had all happened, and she couldn't. It hurt too much.

A tear fell from her eye. Hayley didn't bother wiping it; she didn't even bother trying to smother the sob that escaped her lips, because she was alone. There was no one there to hear her break. And so she did, Hayley broke. Letting everything she had held on the inside out, without even trying. She shredded the bottom of her shirt into shreds, dug her nails into her tummy and scratched at it until it bled, pulled at her hair until pieces tore out of their roots, ripped out cries of grief and loss until her eyes were dry and her throat raw.

And until there was nothing else she could do.

Then the worst possible thing happened, she had visitors.

"Excuse me, Hayley I'd like to intro- oh my good God, what have you done!"

The now turned on light burned her eyes, and through her bleary sight from bed, Hayley watched as the nurse, Sophie, twisted around in the doorway and yelled for 'emergency attendants and add-on restraints'. Her heart skipped up to her throat at what she heard, but she was just so tired. Too tired to even sit up as a flurry of white-clad men came in with leather buckled straps, too tired to even bat an eye as they manually straightened her out of her fetal position, to tired to even fight at they wrapped the restraints around her wrists and ankles and tied them onto the iron of her bed. She couldn't move, but it didn't matter anymore.

Asking for antiseptic and medical supplies, Sophie dismissed the attendants and approached Hayley's bed, kneeling down. "Oh Hayley, why would you do this to yourself?" She questioned sadly, stroking Hayley's hand comfortingly and brushing her messy hair away from her face. The nurses brown eyes moved down towards the bloody flesh of Hayley's exposed stomach, and she sighed, a crease forming between her brows.

"It doesn't matter any more." Hayley responded flatly, wanting to flinch away from the woman's touch, however she couldn't even make the smallest of movements in the restraints that were probably there to protect herself.

Sophie just shook her head. "You can't go around doing things like this, bad things will happen, and I won't be able to help you. You'll get sent away, and it'll be to another…" She didn't finish her sentence, but she didn't need to. Hayley knew that if another incident like that happened she'd be sent away to another ward, one that was for people who were a danger to themselves. Those were the ones that were on the upper floors, or as some people liked to say, further away from humanity.

"You don't need to tell me, Sophie. I get it, alright?"

The medical supplies arrived, and thus the conversation ended. Hayley watched silently as Sophie got to work at trying to fix what she had messed up. After lathering her hands in antibacterial sanitizer, Sophie grabbed a packet of disinfected wipes and started wiping away the dried blood that was staining her wounds. Hayley noticed the micro expression of shock that briefly hit her face when she saw the stretch marks that scarred Hayley's abdomen, and she felt a pang when her face changed from surprise to sorrow and pity. She hated that. Recovering from her brief stall, Sophie grabbed the bottle of betadine and soaked a cotton ball in it, quickly murmuring, "this may sting slightly", before wiping it across the cuts, causing Hayley to hiss in pain. And after that, Sophie brought out a large wound dressing and applied it to Hayley's stomach gently.

Sophie brushed the strips of Hayley's shirt to the side, lifted the blanket so that it was covering her, and then pulled it back down to Hayley's hips when she said she'd get "too hot" with it. After packing the supplies back into the first aid bag, Sophie fluffed the pillow under Hayley's head, and used a tissue to wipe her face clean. It was a strange sensation, to have someone be so tender and kind in their actions, and she didn't know how to react to it. So she didn't, and instead, just stared at the ceiling.

Nodding her head, Sophie rose and took a step back, awkwardly hovering near the door. "There is a reason that I came here in the first place, though, Hayley." As she placed her hand over the doorknob, opened it, and quickly disappeared from view, a flush of fear coursed through Hayley's veins, and her mind fluttered through all the possible scenarios that could've been happening.

"Hi, I'm Katherine Pierce."

The brunette stranger had only given Hayley a half-glance before she turned back to Sophie who had reappeared. "Hayley, this is your new dorm mate, Katherine. She's also going to be joining your group under Matt's supervision." She gave an awestruck Hayley what was probably supposed to be an encouraging grin, before she led Katherine over to her bed. "Katherine, this is where you'll be sleeping. The schedule down in this ward is almost exactly the same as where you were previously, however there is recreational time between one and five pm in the recreational room, where you can do as you please."

Katherine's lips parted into a delighted smile, and she nodded, almost eagerly. "Thank you so much for your help, Sophie, I really appreciate it." She drawled, voice hushed and the syllable of every word stressed, her eyes locking onto Sophie's and not letting go. "If you could please inform my dear ex-doctor Meredith Fell that I've settled in perfectly, that'd mean a lot to me."

Sophie looked at Katherine oddly. "Um, okay, sure. I can do that for you." She responded, a tinge of hesitation in her voice, and then gestured to a switch by the door. "If there's anything else you need, there's a call button just here that will alert any nurse or attendant. Lights out and doors locked at 8 o'clock, so you have fifteen minutes if you want to wander around and meet the others from your group, but you must be back by 8 sharp, otherwise penalties will be enforced."

With one last smile at Katherine, and an almost apologetic one to Hayley, Sophie left the room.

Having not yet been fully acknowledged by her roommate, Hayley held her breath, watching Katherine's back as she hovered in the doorway, seemingly trying to make up her mind on what to do next. Hayley secretly hoped that her new 'dorm mate' would want to meet the others, rather than get acquainted with her. Especially considering how she currently looked, her face still red damp from tears, her wound dressing exposed, and her arms and legs already stiff from lying in the same position for so long. She didn't want Katherine to meet her when she was in such a state.

But alas, nothing could be done, as the brunette turned around and laid her eyes on Hayley.

Katherine tipped her chin up into the air and crossed her arms as she examined Hayley, who avoided eye contact, hoping she could ignore her. Her soft waves framed her face, her slightly squinted brown eyes looked sultry, and she was tall and slender. She was glamorous, even in her pajamas. Hayley had no idea what a person like her was doing in a psychiatric hospital. After a moment, Katherine clicked her tongue and shook her head, before making her way with her back over to the adjacent bed.

"So you're Hayley, right?" Katherine started, almost half mindedly, as she pulled out a couple of items from a weathered leather duffel bag. She brought out three pairs of slippers, one in zebra print with pink fluffy trimming, another covered in golden glitter stars, the last with a plaid pattern and purple bows, all equally as tattered and worn as the next. Then, a small plastic vial of brand name roll on perfume, as spray on wasn't allowed, a wooden paddle brush with natural bristles, and last, but not least, a silver chain bracelet, with a blue precious stone pendant hanging off it.

Hayley eyed the things she had pulled out whilst murmuring a "yeah" that was probably too soft, but her raw throat couldn't take any more. In fact, she was in a little state of shock over how few things Katherine appeared to possess. For such an elegant and beautiful woman, Hayley thought that she would've had a flurry of beauty products, accessories, shoes and clothes. However Katherine, much like Hayley herself, didn't seem to have many things of importance.

Twisting around on her heel with her hands on her hips, she said, "Well, you already know my name." She sat down on the side of her bed, watching Hayley carefully, her eyes taking into account every minute detail about the person before her. "And what exactly brings you here, Hayley?"

Swallowing to try to lubricate her throat, Hayley looked away from Katherine's steady stare, and up to the ceiling, trying to once again distance herself from her whole situation. But of course, she was still fragile from her small breakdown, and she couldn't help the way her eyes welled up. "I'm here for passive aggressive personality disorder." She choked out, her hands fisting and toes curling up, deciding not to return the question, hoping her new 'roomie' would get that she wasn't in the mood to necessarily chat.

And Hayley could feel Katherine's eyes burn a hole into her stomach. She could feel Katherine's question silently screaming from her closed mouth. Sighing, she decided to just get it out with, and then attempt to fall asleep so she wouldn't have to think about anything anymore.

She ground her teeth, and turned her head to her fellow patient who was blatantly watching her, and started, "I hurt myself on my stomach when-"

"-I know."

"What?"

"I know." Katherine repeated simply, her tone almost throbbing and a well-shielded hint of sorrow in her eyes. Then, she pushed her covers back, slid into her bed, and rolled over so that all a speechless Hayley could stare at was the narrow back of her roommate who knew.

And Hayley realized what she meant by 'I know'.

The ache, the pain, the loss, the grief. It had all been there, right in front of her and right in Katherine. The only pain that could be attributed to the loss of a child. The kind of pain that only a mother could suffer. It was unique and terrible and instantly recognizable.

It had only been the span of a few minutes but Hayley was starting to think that maybe she wouldn't be so alone after all. Maybe not completely.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

"So Bonnie…" Matt began after she had settled in the seat across from him. She saw him ready his pen at the top of the paper on his clipboard, which was something she hadn't seen him do at any of her past sessions. "How do you think these sessions have been going for you over the past few weeks?"

That was it. Then and there Bonnie knew it was that appointment. The one where after quite a few sessions of mindless chit chat about trivial things such as what she did with her day and her favorite animal, the therapist would try and dig a lot more deeper, towards the 'center of her trauma'. It was always something she avoided, because, frankly, she hated recounting that night. And every time she seemed to do it, her condition worsened. She told every therapist of that simple fact, but they prodded her on anyway, pushing her and pushing her as if there wasn't going to be a drop, then acting surprised when she fell off the edge anyway. It was tedious and the whole reason why she was actually there in the first place.

She scanned her eyes around the office, trying to find something else to talk about. The room was small, with only just enough space for the chestnut desk that Matt sat on one side of, and the cotton covered armchair Bonnie was seated in on the other. But what it lacked in space it made up for in color and just stuff, because boy, was it busy.

The walls were painted an electric orange that would give any one a headache if they looked at it for too long. There was only one, miniature, steel framed window in the room that let in a minimal amount of light. A tall over hanging lamp sat in one corner of the room and was probably perpetually running. A, get this, clock with the backing of a yellow smiley face grinned at Bonnie, the arms showing her it was ten past five o'clock in the evening. She quickly looked away from its insistent eyes and towards the abstract art canvases that all featured the color green in several different shades: olive, jade, lime, emerald and more. They all lined the wall opposite the window; slightly mirroring what was on the other side of the glass, which was forest.

The air in the room was heavy and humid and smelt entirely of peppermint, which she attributed to the scent diffusing humidifier that was on one side of Matt's desk, next to a cup full of pens and a sloppily stacked pile of paper work and psychology books. On the other side of the desk, was a bonsai tree that sat in a blue glazed ceramic pot. Bonnie stared at that for longer than anything because she couldn't help but marvel at how the tree seemed to be thriving. Despite the lack of light in the room, despite its parched soil, despite its slanted trunk, its small branches that stuck out haphazardly, its over grown leaves, it was surviving. Bonnie admired that.

"Bonnie…?"

"-It was nice to see my Grams on Friday." She was snapped back to reality and blurted out the comment before she could stop herself, in a weak and obvious attempt to change the subject. "I showed her around the place and she agreed with me when I said that the facilities were better than any of the other places we looked at." Rambling on, Bonnie hoped that the subject would pick up. "I mean, its got classes which is totally rad, and I can learn things like yoga and meditation and how to actually draw because really, I have the art skills of a five year old."

And it did, because Matt seemed to forget his past question, as he began jotting something down, and then chewing the end of his pen for a moment, before looking up. "Was it nice to see a familiar face after almost three weeks in here?"

Bonnie nodded, feeling a grin creep up onto her lips as she thought of her Grams, the woman she loved more than anyone else in the world. She was flawed, of course, but she was only human. Yes, she believed in things like fate, destiny, karma, and a whole other dimension where she thought those who had passed away resided. Yes, she was a slight alcoholic who claimed to have clairvoyant powers about the future. And yes, she was sometimes a bit manic in how she acted, muttering about magical beasts and wonderful powers.

But she had practically raised Bonnie, and Bonnie loved her with her everything.

"It was." Bonnie admitted, now freely letting her smile rein her expression. "I miss her so much. She has always been there for me, so when anything was ever wrong, I could always go to her. It's been hard to not be able to do that."

He blinked, and seemed to ponder on that thought. "… You said that when anything was wrong, you could go to her?" He questioned, watching her intently.

"Yeah."

"Why don't you tell me about her? What is your Grams like, Bonnie?"

She let a rueful smile break across her lips at the concept of trying to define the woman who had helped raise her since she was a baby. There was just so much about her and one simple conjunction of letters just didn't seem to do her justice. She was a hard-ass, but kind and gentle, she was understanding but could be unforgiving, she was eccentric and unconventional, yet also truthful and realistic. So she just decided to settle on the start. "When I was younger, I used to be scared of her, Grams was kind of a no-nonsense kinda woman, and she wouldn't put up with any demands from little stubborn me. It resulted in me almost hating every time she came over or we visited her, because unlike my dad, she wouldn't take shit. But that was… Before." Her throat closed up on the word, and she had to swallow a few times before she could manage to gasp a breath in.

Matt didn't say anything, he just nodded, understanding or pity (Bonnie sometimes couldn't tell the difference) in his crystal eyes. Maybe he was being polite at her choke up, maybe he knew why. She didn't know what that file of his held. Yet, he didn't comment, and she started up talking again.

"Ever since I could remember she's always been into things like," she paused to let in a bark of nostalgic laughter, "the occult. She believes in divination, curses, karma, runes and all that kind of stuff."

Matt's eyebrows rose up into his hairline. It was a look Bonnie frequently saw on people's faces when she told them about those particular details. She didn't mind, she knew it was considered 'crazy', but she didn't care. It helped her cope, in a way. "Do you believe in things like that?" He asked; his pen readied at the top of his paper.

Bonnie just shrugged. "I… I believed in it was I was younger…" But she paused and frowned, muttering "no" to herself, because those didn't seem to be the right words. Bonnie didn't 'believe' in those kinds of things, the occult and divination and faith and destiny and magic, she- "I knew. It wasn't a belief, it was a fact to me, back then. Those things were as real to me back when I was younger as the sun and moon were."

He stared at her for a bit longer, an expectant look on his features, as though he was waiting for her to say more, but when her eyes wandered back to the bonsai, he asked, "But what about now?" His voice was soft when he prompted the thought track, because even though he didn't really know, he thought that perhaps it might delve deeper into her. Faith was a sensitive subject. Matt needed to be delicate.

"Veldismagn."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Veldismagn." She repeated. A beat. "It's a tattoo I have."

Matt sighed. "Bonnie, I asked you if-"

"-It's an Icelandic magical stave." He halted in the rest of his question at her interruption, his silence telling her to continue on. "I got it… After. I was only fifteen, and it was probably very illegal. But I wanted it."

"Does it have any meaning to it? Or did you want it just because?"

Grabbing at one side of the collar of her V-neck shirt, she tugged it down far enough, just so that he could see half of the ornate pattern that stained the skin of her breast, marking just above her where her heart supposedly beat. "It's traditionally meant to go on your chest and be drawn out in blood. I fulfilled the former and the latter to a lesser degree." Gently, Bonnie traced her finger over the pattern as she had before a million times, questioning whether she actually had done enough to activate its powers. "The stave is meant to protect me."

And it hadn't.

And it had.

Because while the scars of everything she had been through, everything she had seen, marred every inch of her soul, she hadn't been hurt.

Well, at least not physically. Not since that evening.

_Grams was out of town, meeting up with some 'old friends in Denver', however Bonnie suspected she just wanted her to spend rare father-daughter alone time with her visiting dad. Bonnie wished she hadn't done that._

_"Oh, well that's just fricken great!" Bonnie yelled at her suit-clad father once the sound heavy footsteps ascending up the stairs met her ears. Her teen angst was boiling over and drowning any piece of rationality she may've had left. But she couldn't help it. Instead of her father returning back to Mystic Falls for his usual holiday homecoming with the news that this time he'd be there to stay like she had foolishly hoped, he came back informing her that he was actually the new Mayor of Richmond, and wouldn't be able to visit them down in 'ye olde' Mystic Falls as often anymore!_

_Instead of raising her, instead of nurturing her and being there for every moment in her life, every birthday, every heartache, every success, every milestone. Instead of doing what he was supposed to do, instead of being her dad, he had abandoned her at the age of five to some woman relative, his own mom, who scared her shitless. All because he had been offered a job as the Deputy Mayor of Richmond, and for some reason, whatever he mustered up in the moment, he simply couldn't take her with him. But don't worry, he'd 'visit frequently'._

_She loved him no matter what, and with every piece of her heart she hoped that each time he'd returned, he was there to stay. Bonnie was just so sure that this was it. But it wasn't._

_And she hated him for it._

_"Oh! Let me guess," Bonnie continued on bellowing into his taken aback and puzzled face, "another reporter who wanted to write a puff piece of the 'man of the people' in his home! Well let me tell you now, lady, this isn't his home! In fact-"_

_"-Bonnie, get in the closet." Her father interrupting order was quiet, and stark in contrast to how she had just been acting._

_She was felt confused and confronted._

_"Bonnie do as you're told." His tone was harsh, his eyes calculating, and his body posture defensive, hands fisted._

_Crossing her arms, she shrugged. "Why-"_

_"-I didn't invite anyone over."_

_All the air left her lungs in the exact moment that she heard a door, the adjacent bathroom door, kicked open. The lock shattered loudly and she could hear the wood split. Looking to her dad, who had already grabbed one of her marble and iron cheerleading trophies in his hand, she could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Her mouth was dry, so dry that she could barely take in any more oxygen. She was trembling to run but felt as though she couldn't move._

_Then, her heart stopped beating and the noise of multiple gunshots into the ceiling detonated her eardrums, leaving a jarring and deafening ringing sound behind. Nothing but penetrating ringing, ringing that was so loud it was almost as though she really wasn't hearing anything at all, and the taste of plaster on her lips that had sprinkled down from above._

_She couldn't hear him, but when she looked through the tears in her eyes at her frantic father who stood by the door, and she could see his lips moving but she couldn't for the life of her hear him over the sound of the ringing and her heart attack._

_And then red._

_Red._

_All she could see was red. Because while the ringing in her ears had quieted enough for her to hear her father hiss the words "get in the", the rest was smothered by the red that tore from the wound on his neck. Perhaps he would've been able to finish if it weren't for the man with the dagger who had swiped the blade across the skin of her dad's throat._

_Like him, Bonnie could barely make a sound, and the one she did was a strangled shriek that escaped her throat as blood sprayed on her face, as the intruder dug his knife into her father's abdomen, once, twice, thrice, and soon too many to count. Rudy Hopkins collapsed down to the floor, the statue falling from his hand and breaking to pieces on the floor, crimson coating his once stark white shirt. Blood pooled around his body as he convulsed grotesquely, his limbs poking out either which way as he reached for help that didn't exist. More maroon squirted out of the marred flesh of his neck, gushing onto the murderer's face, onto Bonnie's walls, the ceiling, a photo of her and Grams on her tenth birthday._

_She found herself unable to do anything but fall to her knees and stare as her father took his last gasps of oxygen in vain, as his death stained her bedroom. He died staring at his only daughter, who had watched as he was murdered. And even when he was suddenly still (so still that Bonnie almost expected him to jump up and laugh and tell her it was all a prank; he didn't) blood still spewed out. Suffocating on her own silently sobbed tears, Bonnie ever so slowly and carefully looked up into the eyes of the man who had just murdered her dad in cold blood._

_They were green. Just like her own, although darker, with an undeniable madness deep inside, masked by a calm stare as he watched her. His lips twitched at the corners, and he was almost smiling. A dripping blade in one hand, a shotgun in the other, and blood trickling down his features. And even after using all his strength to stab her father hundred of times, he was disturbingly at peace, tranquil, as he turned towards her, crouching down so his gaze was level with hers._

_"Hey there, little girl."_

_His voice was velvety and smooth, his words customarily pleasant and tone jovial. He lifted his hand, the one with the gun, up to give her an innocent wave. A grin, that might've been described as friendly if it weren't for the blood on his lips, painted his face._

_"What, cat got your tongue?"_

_The only thing she had the strength to do was hiss through the knot in her throat, "You're sick."_

_His grin widened until it looked like his face was split. He pointed to his temple with the knife. "I am."_

_And ever so slowly, he edged forward, shuffling his feet in an almost comical manner._

_"I'm Silas, by the way."_

_Once he was only inches away from her, Silas slapped one hand down on one of her shoulders, pulling her further forward so their foreheads rested against each other. She cried some more and he chuckled softly at that, pressing the barrel of the gun to the left of her chest, nearby her broken heart._

_Through her welled up eyes Bonnie looked into his, feeling his breath feather across her lips and his fingers almost tenderly stroke her skin, staring death straight in the face. She couldn't help but feel ready for what she knew was coming. With her father had died her fear because she knew that she had just seen the worst of the worst._

_But she needed to know one last thing. "Why?"_

_He misunderstood, or didn't care for her question. "I want you to know who I am because I want you to know the name of the man who killed your father, who will haunt your dreams for the rest of your life, who will scar you, and who will almost kill you, but not quite."_

_He brought his arm around her back and pulled her into his embrace, the gun now cutting into her breast, his lips by her ear and his hand cradling her head._

_"Now this may feel like a slight pinch."_

_Everything seemed to go in slow motion. She barely knew what had happened until she felt the dampness on her breast, until Silas stood up and watched as she fell back onto the floor, until blood pooled out of her mouth, and then she felt it. The fire in her lungs. It was like something inside there had exploded and her lung had caved in on itself. Each breath was like a knife digging and twisting around her chest. Something was pressing down on her ribcage with terrible weight, the pressure increasing agonizingly slow until she could barely breath. Or maybe it was because she was choking on her own blood._

_And she heard and saw all it too. The ringing and red; just like before._

_And then sirens._

_But it was too late. Or too early, Bonnie didn't really know._

_She had been shot._

"It must've hurt."

"What?" Bonnie shot back quickly, quickly glancing down to where she had shown Matt her tattoo, because she made sure that when she showed him her tattoo earlier, she didn't expose the thick scarred-over wound the bullet had left, which was but an inch away. She couldn't talk about it. She wouldn't. The mere thought of doing so made her feel those emotions all over again, and it always felt like she had just been shot. She didn't like talking about it because she hated reliving it.

"The tattoo." He elaborated, and she sucked back in the oxygen she had been depraving herself of in her moment of fear. "It looks quite intricate, and that's a sensitive place, so it must've hurt a lot to get it done."

Bonnie nodded, understanding, her eyes so wide she hoped he wouldn't be able to tell that she was trying to dry out the tears that had welled up. She shrugged. "I was something I desperately wanted to get done. It only stung a bit, and it was worth it." Bonnie excluded mentioning she had been through worse pain.

Matt hummed in response, scribbling away at the page, and Bonnie liked the sound of the pen scratching the surface as he wrote. She watched his hand twirl and loop across the lines, almost in a trance. However, she was broken out of it soon enough, when he stopped writing, placed the clipboard to the side, leaned forward and rested his hands on the table, sighing in finality.

It made her nervous.

"Bonnie, there is another, perhaps, issue, that I need to talk with you about." He looked reluctant as her carefully eyed her, trying to gauge her reaction. Yet she remained neutral, a mask she had mastered a long long time ago. "Doctor Maxfield did an assessment of Kai and another patient up in ward D, and passed them as being clear to return back to ward A. Kai and this new patient, Katherine, will be joining us in our group."

She was silent. She wouldn't say anything. So he continued on.

"Now, Doctor Maxfield and I are aware that you and Kai have had problems in the past, however Doctor thinks that Kai is finally on the right combination medication that will decrease his violent and unpredictable tendencies. He also believes that attempting to move Kai into another group could be detrimental to his progress, as it will be his third therapy group and could inhibit his ability to create bonds with others.

"Bonnie, I know that this may not be the kind of news you want, but I want you to know that I will do everything I can to ensure that you are comfortable around me and the group and even Kai. Perhaps you two got off to a bad start, and hopefully his medication as well as regular sessions with his ward D doctor will have helped be able to communicate with others. If you would like, I could even set up a session with just you, me and Kai so we could talk out your issues in a safe space?"

Bonnie didn't know what else she could say. There was nothing to she could do to stop his transfer. And even then, Kai was sick, she was sick. Just because he had planned on doing something absolutely horrible to his family, just because he terrified her and perhaps reminded her of someone who haunted her nightmares, didn't mean that he didn't need treatment. Anyone who was sick in the head, whether they were innocent or guilty, needed help.

She had seen what the consequences of it being untreated could reap.

And Bonnie wasn't about to let a little thing such as fear of one person get in the way said person's progress, as well as her own. She had already done the latter for the past six years of her life, and Kai wasn't worth it.

"Thank you for telling me Matt. I appreciate the warning."

He almost fell off his chair at her calm response, yet he didn't, and instead chose to just stare at her, dumbstruck.

"Is this session over? I have a creative writing class to get to."

Matt simply nodded; Bonnie stood, thanked him as per usual, and walked out. Grabbing for his clipboard, he wrote at the bottom of the session page "Progress made".

Then promptly added an "?" as he really had no idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there is some backstory to both Hayley and Bonnie and even Katherine (although that was lightly implied). Katherine is now a main. Anyways, thank you to everyone who has subscribed and bookmarked this story! It really means the world to me that you all like my writing enough to keep up with it, and I just hope you're all enjoying the story. Also, thank you to everyone who has given me a kudos, it makes my day when I get the email on my phone telling me someone had done so!
> 
> Please if you have the time, comment and tell me what you think of this chapter and the story so far, or kudos if you haven't yet and particularly liked the chapter, it truly means a lot. If you haven't already, subscribe to know easily about future updates! Once again thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. X
> 
> **Next Chapter - After a group therapy session, Rebekah has a talk over lunch with Klaus, who has been acting strange. Katherine attempts to mind her own business and soak up some sun, when she is greeted by Caroline, who decides to join her. Subsequent people arrive. Kol has a therapy session with Matt wherein they talk about his past and how those resolved issues may still be hurting him. ******


	9. Cracks

"…And yeah, the teacher said that it was good I was using art as a safe way of releasing my violent thoughts and feelings, but mentioned that I probably shouldn't share the pieces with other patients." Kai cocked his head to the side, shaking it and sighing as though in exasperation. There was a silence in the circle, and Matt opened his mouth to comment, however he was interrupted. "I mean, I was thinking though, like, yo teach? If my paintings are as good as you say they are then…"

Rebekah scowled as Kai continued on prattling about his stupid day, tuning him out. There was nothing she detested more than the group therapy sessions; everyone either yelled at each other or rambled on about the crap they filled their days with and how that 'made them feel' (normally sarcastically), making it hard for her to even get a word in. It was boring, and she didn't think she ever achieved anything in the meetings. They were completely rudimentary.

And just when Rebekah thought they couldn't get any worse, attempted murderer Kai rejoined the group again, which meant there was more talking, and the sitting was already going overtime. Another woman by the name of Katherine ' _Pierce_ ' had also joined them from up in ward D. Rebekah had met her the previous day in the recreation room, and she already didn't like her. There was something about how the surly looking brunette tried to charm everyone…

The only thing she liked about the sessions was the way Stefan would always seat himself next to her, and how his hand would creep towards hers to latch onto like a lifeline. Him actively seeking out her touch, like he almost _needed_ it, made Rebekah happy. He was the only thing that kept her going in the miserable place. It also probably wasn't allowed; close contact in general with other patients was a bit taboo. But Matt didn't seem to notice, or mind. Rebekah could never tell with him.

Bonnie seemed to be literally sitting on the edge of her seat, probably because she was terrified of Kai, and Rebekah almost felt sympathy for her. She seemed to be trying to put a brave face on, yet looked almost as sickly and pallid as Hayley and Elena did, which meant something. Rebekah had noticed that ever since the familial visits her dorm mate had been acting a bit differently. She wasn't as chipper or 'happy-go-lucky' as she had previously been, no longer attending any of the yoga and creative writing programs she used to attend religiously. Instead, she spent a lot of time in bed, and even then, she always was tired.

Kol was still in temporary isolation after what happened during the family visits. Thankfully, Elijah and Freya had negotiated with the doctor not to move him to another ward, saying that his explosion was out of character and that it was best for his health that he stay nearby his siblings. She kind of missed him, although it was a relief for her to get a break from rolling her eyes at him.

"Okay, Kai!" Matt cut through just as he began talking about how the art classes didn't have enough red paint for him to use. "It's been great to see you share your feelings and qualms about the courses you have been taking, and we can certainly talk about them in our own session later today, but I think that we're certainly past the normal hour we've been allocated. I'm sure Dr. Martin's group are up next and I don't want to keep them waiting any longer than they already have. I'll see you all again on Wednesday!" He chirped jovially, despite everyone already being half way out the room, but for the blabbermouth Kai and the next-to-catatonic Elena.

Rebekah was just glad that Stefan was still holding her hand, although she did have to put up with Damon walking with them as he bitched to his brother about how strange his little girlfriend had been acting recently. As per usual, it was nothing she didn't already know, so she instead focused her thoughts on someone else who had been acting weird recently that she actually cared about; Nik.

While he was in general an erratic and bizarre person, he was acting more odd than usual. Unlike the preceding weeks, he hadn't been hatching escape plans or mooning over Caroline. Even _she_ had noticed, asking Rebekah a few times if her brother was okay, which just prompted a response to the likes of 'piss off'. She decided that today was the day that she got to the bottom of what was wrong with Nik, so while Damon was in the midst of talking about how Elena's hair wasn't as shiny as it normally was, she let go of Stefan's hand (with her heart swooning over the way it took him a moment longer to let go, seemingly unwilling to do so) and picked up a tray, moving towards where her older brother stood in the line.

"Afternoon, brother."

He grunted in response, not even sparing her a glance, shuffling forward.

She paused, pondering on what she should say. "…You look a bit tired-"

"-What do you want?" He snapped back heatedly, twisting around on the heel of his foot, his eyes on fire and his nostrils flaring wildly, staring down at her like prey. It was his intimidation tactic, she knew, Nik always used his height to his advantage when he could. It didn't scare her; it just further confirmed that he was angry about something.

Rebekah looked back up at him, unimpressed, then turned and held out her tray for the lunch woman to plop on her plate what was probably supposed to be a vegetable stir-fry. Suppressing the urge to gag, she walked around her immobile brother, grabbed a glass of cranberry juice and the cup of medication with her name on it, quickly downing both and opening her mouth wide to show the nurse.

Standing off to the side, she patiently waited for Nik to do the same, and then trailed behind him as he found a seat on the far side of the room, by themselves. They both half-heartedly picked at their meals in silence, before Rebekah finally looked up, and sighed.

"You know you can talk to me." She started quietly, and he met her eyes, hesitant. The pain in them was something she had seen before, not only in his in the past but also in her own reflection. Reaching across, Rebekah held his hand, giving him an encouraging smile. "I won't tell anyone."

His jaw clenched and his walls broke down. "Tatia is divorcing Elijah."

" _That bitch_." Rage instantly engulfed Rebekah over the frizzy haired fuckgirl.

"Don't talk about her like that." Nik protested hollowly, staring down at his hands as he started tearing a paper napkin into little pieces.

She almost growled, slamming her hands down on the table furiously. "Don't you dare try to defend her, Niklaus! She was your first and _only_ friend in high school. The tart basically isolated you from befriending any other people, or girls for that matter, but when you were clearly in love with her she acted as if she knew no better! And of course that was her right, however she went a step too fucking far when she asked, _she_ , asked Elijah out, and he accepted, unbeknownst to your feelings! And then! And _then_ she-"

"-I know the story, Bekah." He cut through sharply, a frown etched deep into his face.

Rebekah just scoffed, leaning back in her seat and shaking her head. "I just can't believe it." A pause. "Actually, I _can_ believe it. She was malicious right from the beginning. _Of course_ years after smashing your heart to pieces she decides to do the same with our older brother." Her heart ached at the thought of how Elijah had to experience his first heartbreak, and how Nik had to relive his. It just wasn't fair that both her brothers, her amazing brothers, were broken down by such a spiteful, unimportant little tramp.

There was a silence, wherein Rebekah continued on letting her fury grow and Nik, having finished with the first napkin, reached for hers to begin doing the same exercise. However she grabbed his hand before he could touch the paper, stopped, then shoved their trays to the side, and stood, pulling him into an awkward hug over the table. Running her fingers through his hair, she gently rubbed his back and cradled his head. "I'm so sorry, Nik. I truly am." She whispered, feeling his release a shuddering breath, one that told her he was trying with everything he could to not cry. "She's not worth it. She never deserved you and she doesn't deserve Elijah."

Although his mouth was pressed into her shoulder, she could still hear him murmur, "I still love her". And she leaned back, feeling her eyes well up at the concept of loving someone who hated, something she knew of all too well.

"I know you do Nik. I still love Alexander. Despite him manipulating me when I was seventeen to get to the family, I love him now and always will." She saw the rage in his eyes in that moment that she knew she would've seen in herself before. "But I now I know, I _hate_ him more than I love him."

He nodded and Rebekah knew he knew how he felt, and vice versa. Nik and Rebekah both understood it in a way they hadn't before. It seemed the facility had done more good than either of them had thought.

"We'll be alright, Nik."

"Always and forever."

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

The main condition for her to be allowed back into ward A was that she take certain medication that would basically inhibit her from having next to no sexual urges. Her libido was at an all time low, and it was a pretty shitty time for Katherine.

So, she was simply minding her own business, lounging around on the grass area outside, soaking up the sun that she had barely felt in the past nine years. Of course, though, she could never be left to her own devices no matter how much she wanted, and her me time was rudely interrupted by a twittering blonde.

"Oh my Gosh, Elena! You're finally- Oh."

Opening her eyes, Katherine stared up at the face of a disappointed looking Caroline. It had been the third time someone had mistaken her for Elena, and it was beginning to get on her nerves. She hardly saw the resemblance between her and the dull girl that everyone else seemed to see. Katherine was was a ten and Elena was, at best, a seven and a half. And yet, three whole times.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were Elena…" Caroline began as Katherine sat up, plastering a smile on her face that looked as fake as it was, hoping the blonde would fuck off because she was in no mood to deal with the human personification of a Disney princess. "I'm sorry."

"It's a common error." She responded coolly, saying no more and wishing for the best.

And of course because the world hated her, the princess shrugged, taking it upon herself to sit down next to Katherine, crossing her legs and tucking her hair behind her ears, she flashed the brunette an almost artificially bright smile. "We haven't properly met," She began in her nasally voice, holding out her hand, "I'm Caroline."

Sighing obviously, she dropped back down to the ground and closed her eyes. "Katherine Pierce." She muttered in response, waiting to feel Caroline's presence disappear and for the sun the blonde was blocking to reappear. It didn't.

"To be honest, I don't really know why I thought you were Elena…" Caroline started cautiously, and Katherine readied herself to raise and move to an unoccupied part of the grass. "You've got way better hair than her. Much more volume."

She opened one eye.

"I love Elena, I do, but frankly, while she's pretty, you're _beautiful_." The blonde continued on crooning, and damn did she know how to get on Katherine's good side. "You've go to admit, though, there is a strange similarity between you two."

All Katherine did was hum in response, which was definitely kind considering what she was contemplating on doing before. However, she did give Caroline the decency of opening her eyes and leaning on her elbows, showing she was at the very least receptive of more conversation, albeit mainly if it was compliments, but still.

"Hayley's your new roommate, right?"

"Yes." While she was initially annoyed with the concept of not having her own space for herself as she had in ward D, Katherine actually enjoyed Hayley's company. She was quiet and didn't try to force conversation and getting to know her. As well as that, Katherine knew the minute she laid eyes on her that they had both been through the same thing. It was obvious and for the first time in a while she felt an ache in her heart. Yet, relating to someone else was something she had never experienced before, and despite the awful thing in common, it was… nice. "She's pretty easy."

Scoffing in response, Caroline seemed to disagree. "Really? Because she used to be my roommate and all she did was ignore me." And the like Katherine once had for the princess instantly disappeared, and she felt the strange need to defend the dorm mate she barely talked to.

"That's actually what I like about her." She shot back, her tone acidic. "She hasn't tried to schmooze me into being her friend or harassed me when I clearly want to be left alone. That's exactly what I think someone would look for in a roommate." Tipping her head to the side, Katherine peered at a flushed Caroline. "Don't you think?"

Before the all the blood in her body could rush to her face and she could manage to utter a word out, Stefan joined in on their little chat, once again doing what Katherine was learning to detest.

"Rebekah! Elena! Hey, what are you-" His words, of course, were cut off at realizing it wasn't his wife or wife's roommate sitting on the grass, but rather, people who had similar hair. "Sorry, Caroline, uh, Katherine, I thought you were-"

"-Elena! Yes!" She finally cracked, not longer being able to take the insult. "I _know_ , because I've been mistaken for her for four times now. Maybe by the time that knock off version of me gets out of here I'll have a split personality disorder where one half is actually me and the other her!"

There was a perturbed silence between the three people, and from her peripheral vision Katherine could see a couple of nurses hover some feet away, probably ensuring things didn't get at all violent as she had a history of that happening. Rubbing her temple and wondering what she had done to deserve such shit in her life, Katherine pushed herself to her feet and Stefan wringed his hands out in front of him as she rubbed dirt off her ass. "I didn't mean to offend you, I was just looking for Rebekah…" He said softly, and Katherine almost felt bad for shouting at him. But that moment passed and she was just pissed off again.

Caroline jumped up, her face no longer red but her features distorted into delicate expression of irritation. "It was actually pretty rude of you to shout at Stefan like that, Katherine." She scolded with her arms crossed and one foot tapping, and Katherine had war flashbacks to her mother having the exact same stance when she was angry.

"I don't fucking care."

Her cobalt eyes went aflame and her mouth opened wide, probably to retort with something like 'I don't appreciate your cuss words', however _once again_ her window to respond was cut short by Stefan.

"Hi Bonnie!" He exclaimed a little too enthusiastically.

The petite girl ran up to them, slightly breathless, a grin on her face and obliviousness to the tense atmosphere between the three. "Hey Stefan, Caroline, Katherine!" Bonnie puffed, resting her hands on her hips.

Even though Bonnie had barely ever made eye contact with Katherine (probably because she spent most of her time around Kai, who she had heard from the man himself, Bonnie didn't really like), Katherine already decided she liked the woman, purely because she didn't mistake her for the _other_ one.

"I think Elena's feeling better!" She divulged excitedly, and Caroline's expression immediately brightened up and Stefan looked attentive. Katherine rolled her eyes at their obsession with Elena because by God it was beginning to really fuck her up. "We've all had no idea why she's been acting off lately, not even Damon. I was making my way towards the recreation room from the library and I overheard some nurses gossiping…"

It was at this point Katherine wondered why she was even still there, yet just as she was about to turn away and stalk off, Bonnie said something that peaked her interest.

"Well, they were talking about how they turned a blind eye to some tall, dark haired and blue eyed guy sneaking into room 109, which is Elena's room." The three of them breathed a sigh of relief and smiles broke out onto their faces. "I don't know what's been wrong with her, but if Damon has finally decided to talk to her about it, I think we can try to help her get back on track. She'll be okay, guys, we all will."

And Katherine turned and slinked away, wanting to hide the smirk that had dirtied her lips because she _knew_.

The tall, dark haired and blue-eyed guy who was sneaking into room 109 wasn't Damon; it was Kai.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

It had been a week since he had been put in isolation. He rarely saw anyone else, and when he did it wasn't normally a friendly face. So when the passive-sounding attending nurse told him that he had a therapy session with Matt, he almost cried. Sitting in the brightly colored office, he was surprised to find himself happy to be there.

And then the session started.

"So you were sent to a rehab facility in California when you were seventeen?"

The air in the room suddenly became very thick and hard to breath. "Yes." Kol answered, his mouth dry, swallowing repeatedly.

"Where?"

Kol was silent. He didn't want to talk about this. It didn't matter anymore.

"Kol, if you don't cooperate with me in this, I won't be able to clear you to go back with everyone else, and you'll be kept in isolation, or worse yet, to another ward." As Matt cut the quiet with his scary words, Kol looked down to the clipboard in his therapist's hands, and the thick yellow file beneath it, and he realized Matt would know. But he didn't, not yet. He would find out one-way or another, he just wanted to hear it from Kol himself. "You had an outburst that could've become violent, and you've had a physical fight with another patient. I've protected you from being moved the previous two times. I won't be able to do it again."

The past was coming back; fast, to hit him in the gut. He had no choice but to take it. He couldn't hide anything from Matt, even if he tried. "I went to Anton Center in San Diego." His voice was slightly hoarse as he thought of his time there.

Matt wrote something down on paper of his clipboard, nodding. "I hear that's meant to be very nice facility." He noted, looking up and smiling.

"I'm sure it would be if you weren't in a state of cocaine withdrawal."

Clearing his throat, the smile fell off Matt's face at Kol's harsh response. "How long were you there for?"

Steadying his eyes on the brutally bright lamp in the corner of the room, Kol willed his mind to stop losing it's self in the past and to _focus_ on what he was being asked. But it was hard; it was oh so hard when those memories were as vivid as though they happened yesterday. "Four months." He could feel sweat breaking out across his skin and he suddenly felt extremely tired.

"So you must've had quite a severe-"

"-Listen love, _Matthew Donovan_." Kol cut through, the subject was breaking him down into smaller and smaller pieces and he no longer wanted to talk about it anymore. He didn't like feeling weak. So instead, he entered a state of denial. "I'm aware that I clearly have some sort of 'issue' currently, au contraire to what I think. However, I don't know what my past has to do with it! I'm one hundred percent sober right now, and I will never let something as little as addiction take me over again. Okay?"

Pursing his lips, although silently fuming, he kept his cool. He opened the thick folder in his hands and Kol leered as Matt's pastel eyes flicked over the words. "You overcoming your drug addiction is the source of your narcissistic personality disorder, so we need to-" The sentence was interrupted by hysterical laughter erupting from the wide split lips of Kol.

After a moment or two more of snickering and wiping a faux tear away, the Mikaelson shook his head dismissively, as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. Because it was.

"You overcame an extremely hard time and that is absolutely commendable, Kol. However despite the good that has come out of it you are still not okay because you think you are invincible. That is not healthy."

Sighing dramatically, Kol waved his hand about. "Matt, Matt, Matt. I'm completely healthy, and I'm not sick in my head, as you all think I-"

"- _Kol_."

The harshness in which Matt said his name made Kol stop in his sentence, and listen.

"You are in a state of denial over your disorder. It's been around three weeks since you've arrived here and you still haven't come to terms with it, you refuse to, and that is _not_ healthy. You think you are indestructible but you're not." Pages flipped through Matt's nimble fingers with a snapping sound, and he stopped at a large paragraph of text. As his blue eyes widened in shock and he swallowed thickly and loudly, Kol knew what he had just read. "You have a restraining order out against you. By Davina Claire." The therapist looked up. "Who is she?"

He sucked in air sharply after realizing he hadn't been breathing. "My girl- my _ex_ -girlfriend."

"You physically assaulted-"

"- _Once_!" He vehemently blurted out; leaning forward fanatically with his hands gripping the arm rests of his seat. Matt just stared. "I only hit her once! I was drunk, I didn't mean to! But she was saying all these lies about me, these things that weren't true, that _aren't_ true. She said I was sick in the head, that I had a problem, that I was a loser junkie and disgusted her and-"

There was a ripping sound. Kol's fingers had gripped the worn fabric of the chair so tightly that he had torn holes in them. Yet he barely realized, as he hung his head, heaving each breath, his eyes wet and his brows furrowed.

"They were _lies_. I was fine. And I didn't mean hurt her…"

"Do you think it matters if you didn't mean to hurt her?"

Slowly, Kol met his therapist's eyes, puzzled. "What?" He asked, because he didn't understand the line of questioning. Of course it mattered.

"Do you think it mattered to Davina whether you meant to hurt her?"

And he hesitated, taking only a moment to think about it before saying the first thing that came to mind, the only thing. What he knew. "Yes, of course. I was drunk and I didn't mean to hurt her. I didn't know what I was doing." Kol answered, almost tentatively, as though he was having second thoughts about his response.

"But you did." Matt said as though it was simple. "Your judgment may have been impaired, however in that moment you knew what you were about to do and you did it. It doesn't matter if you only did it once or if you didn't 'mean to', it matters that you did it."

Kol shut down right in front of his eyes, locking and bolting the door that was once open a crack, and all Matt could do was watch. So, for a couple of moments of the many minutes of silence he knew would ensue, he chewed on the words in his mouth, trying to come up with the best solution for the patient before him who was a lot more damaged than he first realized.

"Okay."

Closing the copious profile on his lap, he grabbed the forms that he had on his desk and began the process of ticking some boxes, filling in a as few lines, and then signing his name and signature at the bottom. He exhaled heavily, and looked at Kol, whom had his eyes trained on the lamp in the room.

"I'm having you taken out of isolation, as I think it is impairing you rather than clearing your mind. Seeing as Tyler is still in ward D and doesn't seem to be returning any time soon, according to Dr Fell, you'll now be rooming with your brother and Stefan." His voice conveyed his exhaustion; because he truly hadn't anticipated the emotional toll his job really would take on him.

There was an urgent and sharp knock outside, but before he could even begin to form the words on his tongue, the door slammed open, and a rattled looking Sophie jumped in. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were absolutely panicked.

"Elena Gilbert is in the ER in the medical ward; she just attempted suicide."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may be a slight delay for the next chapter. It won't be, like, two months like last time, but maybe a couple of weeks. I've just started school again and it's intense. But I finish early a lot, so that extra free time will be good!
> 
> This story got over a 1000 hits after last chapter! Thank you to everyone who has read up to here, I want you all to know I really appreciate you all giving my story a chance, and I hope you continue to do so. And please, if you have just a minute, leave a comment, even if it's just a smiley face! Any feedback always means a lot. If you haven't already, subscribe or bookmark if you want to know about future updates! And Kudos if you haven't yet and liked this chapter in particular. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. X
> 
> **Next Chapter (a big one to make up for the long wait!) - After managing to sneak into the medical ward, Damon waits out for Alaric and Jeremy to arrive, so he can see Elena with them. There, someone else joins him, and then things unravel before him. Caroline has a session with Matt, and she feels herself about to relapse, but can't bear to tell him. When she leaves his office, she gets into an argument with Klaus over his ignoring her for the past week. He doesn't tell her why, yet soon enough, someone else does. ******


	10. The Relapse-Recover Cycle

Every nerve in his body willed him to just sucker punch the nurse in the face and run through the doors and into the ICU to see her. However, then a _strange_ bout of rationality told Damon that if he did that, he'd just get sent to ward D with Lockwood and all the other crazies, and he knew it was difficult for anyone trying to come back from there.

That is, but for the Little Psycho Weasel and Katherine _Freaking_ Pierce. No one knows how the fuck either of them managed to get out, but Damon didn't want to try it out himself.

 _Jesus_ , the hallway smelt like a mixture of bleach and vomit, and he choked back a gag when he saw the white pajama pants of a patient being wheeled down the hall bleed yellow near his crotch. Yet he couldn't leave; he _wouldn't_ leave. All Damon had to do was wait out for Elena's guardian guy Alaric and maypole brother to come and see her, because _surely_ they would let him tag along. He wasn't about to give up.

And so he walked to the waiting area and sat down on a worn leather seat, his fingers drumming the armrest impatiently, hoping with his everything that they wouldn't realize he was actually a patient of the main psychiatric center and drag him back. Damon himself didn't even know how he managed to just waltz in there, yet he tried, it worked, and he wasn't about to question it any further.

"Fuck."

With the muttering of the word, he felt a presence sit itself down beside him, and he turned his head to see Bonnie. She looked like as much of a mess as he did. The only difference was her face and eyes were blotchy and red from crying, and his knuckles raw and bruised from punching a wall in frustration.

"How long've you been waiting?" She muttered, not even bothering to meet his gaze, rather, blankly staring down at her hands as she picked at a hangnail, although the rest of the skin around all her other nails were etched with dried blood.

Damon huffed and looked ahead at a poster on the wall detailing how to interact with others when you have the flu. "Not very long." Giving her a side-glance, he frowned at the little nervous habit. "Stop doing that, it's gross."

"No."

"You'll get an infection."

Pausing, she just scoffed, continued on. "As if you care."

That _did it_. He turned in his seat, and grabbed at her hand, snatching it away from the damage it was creating, and gripping it so tightly he could feel the bones crack in her palm. Damon's clasp on her hovered as he brought it between them. Bonnie's head whipped up, and she met his eyes, that bore a hole into her own. She didn't even try to pull away, struggle, yelp in pain; they stayed like that for a long, silent moment.

Her poker face broke away in the next, and she crumbled, her lips parting as she let out a wounded breath, and her eyes dampened. Bonnie looked at Damon, almost pleading, and his hand over hers turned from a snatch, to him holding it. It was awkward and a little too tight, but it helped. She shook her head, letting out a little cracking sound from her throat. "I just don't understand… Why did she do it?" Her voice was small, heavy, muddled.

He blinked. He took a breath of the thickly stifling and diseased air into his lungs, held it in until it burned. "I don't know." Damon finally admitted, his voice acidic from the clouded carbon dioxide in his lungs, from his lack of oxygen, but not rude. Until he finally relented and let out the poisoned air, he had been enjoying the moment of lightheadedness. It didn't last.

"You visited her before it happened. What did she say…? How did she seem?"

A beat.

His answer; another question.

" _What_?"

Bonnie flinched at his accusatory tone; at the way he practically threw her hand down, leaned away from her. Cyan eyes were cutting the surface of her skin, yet she wasn't about to back away from his convenient retrograde amnesia. " _You_ visited _Elena_ in her room before she did it." The words came out like knives through her locked jaw and gritted teeth. " _You_ were the last person to talk to her before she tried to kill herself." Her hands squeezed into small tight fists, and she could feel the disapproving stare of the elderly woman a few seats away from her. Bonnie didn't care. "I know _you_ know how it looks, which is bad. I don't think you did anything to her at all, but I want to know what she said before you left."

His brows furrowed deeply, he licked his lips and ran a hand through his hair. Bonnie could hear the sound of the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed multiple times. Letting out a breath, perhaps out of disbelief, Damon pursed his lips and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

And she instantly believed him. It was pathetic, really, how quickly she believed him. Yet, despite his asshole ways, he was her friend; she had seen the way he looked at Elena, the way he talked about her, worried about her. Bonnie just knew that there was no way he could've caused her any harm, whether mental or physical, and that meant he had absolutely no reason to lie, especially to her. And, so, she believed him.

But that meant in place of her question being answered, another, newer, and scarier, one popped up; who had visited Elena before she tried to kill herself?

She breathed out slowly as her mind scattered like dead leaves picking up in a wind, almost instinctively, Bonnie began again at her cuticles. She wasn't going to let it happen this time; she wasn't going to stand by as someone hurt a person she cared about. A dull pain pressed into the back of her eyes, and she dug the heel of her palms onto her green orbs roughly, swearing to herself that no one would ever get hurt as long as she had something to do with it.

"Bon…?"

"It's fine." She bit out quickly, her elbows still cutting into her knees as she pushed her eyes further back into her head, reveling in the relief of her pain. "I just- I don't know. I'm trying to think."

He still didn't know what she was talking about, and why it was suddenly 'fine'. She lifted her head up and looked around the room with her spotted vision. "Bonnie, what the hell are you-"

"- _Rick_!" She jumped up, her voice harsh and shrill, waving her hand and rushing forward. "Alaric! Jeremy! It's me, Bonnie." And there before Damon, stood Elena's sorta guardian and brother-cousin, the former's face drawn and stony, the latter's pale and reddened and damp through the strands of hair that fanned over his features. She scampered up to them, tripping over herself in desperation, clutching at the lapels of her cardigan. "Remember, from the family visits? Elena's my friend."

Brother-cousin Jeremy's face was revealed as he flipped his hair away and squinted his eyes down at her. "I don't remember you." He murmured, a perpetual frown dragging his lips down, his ends of his lanky arms sunk into his hoodie pockets sullenly. Damon sarcastically remarked in his head that it was probably because he had stormed off before he got the opportunity. Elena had mentioned he was two years younger than her, meaning he must've brought his teenage angst into adulthood, that, and emo-style fashion. "Elena never talked about any friends."

At that, Alaric raised his hand to silence Jeremy. "I remember you, Bonnie." Voice ragged and hoarse, he attempted a smile that came out a grimace. Damon noticed lines on his face that hadn't been there last time he saw the man. "What are you doing here? I wouldn't have thought that patients would be allowed to walk freely here."

Bonnie shook her head, feeling blood rush to her face at her admission of "I'm actually not authorized to be here", and Damon jumped up, rushing forward to join the conversation he had previously been eavesdropping on. Shooting him a short and sharply irritated side-glance, she continued on. "Have you seen Elena yet?"

A scoffing sound cut from the roof of Jeremy's mouth to the air between them all, and he sneered, "We might've been with her by now if you hadn't stopped us." And then, before anyone could reply, he stalked around them and towards the reception desk.

Gritting his teeth, Damon's eyes pierced Alaric through the skull. "What's his problem anyway? And don't try to say it's Elena's situation, because that's how he was acting when you both visited her, and now she's _here_."

" _Damon_." Bonnie's voice was next to hysterical. She latched onto his wrist, digging her nails into his bone as hard as she could, but it was to no avail as they were torn and anxiety-bitten soft pads of flesh, and caused no pain. "It's none of your business-"

"-No it's fine." Alaric's voice mixed over hers and she stopped in annoyance at the man's validation of Damon's abrasive demeanor. He rubbed a hand, which Bonnie noticed was stained at the side in what she assumed to be pen ink, over his face roughly, ripping out a hard sigh. The creases on his face deepened. "Elena and Jeremy have had a… troubled relationship." A muscle in his jaw ticked as he regarded them both, and a crease between his brows formed. "Hasn't she ever talked about it?"

Damon silently shook his head, however, hesitantly, Bonnie answered. "She's, uh, always seemed to be a bit… Odd, in how she feels about him. Most of the time she talked about how much she loved and missed him, but in the past week or so, that changed into her stopping participation in group sessions. In private, she, um, rambled on about how jealous Jeremy was of her and wanted to sabotage her progress and…" She ignored Damon's questioning stare burning the side of her face. "Yeah. She never really went into specifics, though, and I didn't feel like it was my place to ask. That's Matt's job."

Blowing air out of his nose, Alaric gave them a curt nod. "Probably a wise decision… Uh, before she was diagnosed, Elena's erratic behavior as Jeremy was growing up affected him deeply. Even after," He tilted his head to the side, rubbing at a knot in his neck as he stared at the floor, "when Elena would go through cycles where she'd go off her medication because she thought she didn't need it anymore. Those were tough. It broke him every single time. He used to be more forgiving of her, but it repeated itself so much and…"

Feeling a pang in her chest, Bonnie gave a murmur of understanding when Alaric's voice trailed off as he tried to explain the unexplainable. The bond between family is strong and thick, heavier than anything else, and so when more weight is piled on, it can break your back. And she knew what it was like to feel that.

"Elena loves Jeremy, and he loves her, but. There's a fine line between love and hate."

Damon knew that, oh boy, _did_ he.

"Anyway," Alaric swiped at the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, and sniffed, pressing his lips into a thin line. "I probably need to join Jeremy before he smothers her with a pillow." Letting out a humorless laugh, he turned from them and moved towards the front reception. Damon started after him, but was yanked back as Bonnie grabbed at the material of his shirt, shooting him a venomous look.

One, which Damon ignored as he glared at her in bewilderment. "Bonnie, what the hell!" He shrieked, looking between her and Alaric's figure as it retreated through a glass sliding door. "I want to see Elena, and the only way-"

"-Are you _so_ self-absorbed that you are thinking of inserting yourself between the emotionally fractured family members of a girl in critical condition that you have known for a couple of weeks, just because you want to see her. Really, Damon?" Her eyes were slits in her judgment, her voice obnoxious, self-righteous, but Damon knew she was just that. Right. "You're better than that. I want to see Elena, and I will, but now is _not_ the right time."

He gulped audibly, nodding.

She let out a long breath, releasing her clasp and going to rub her temples. "Besides, we have a bigger issue on our hands." Bonnie's nostrils flared as she looked up at him, jaw locked and eyes grave. "If it wasn't you who last visited Elena before she tried to kill herself, who was it?"

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

"Caroline, I know it may feel as though it's hard to believe, but Elena didn't attempt what she did maliciously to hurt anyone. It's _not_ your fault."

Biting down hard on her tongue until she tasted blood, she forced herself to slowly nod, silent, rather than voice her thoughts of ' _you're right, Matt, it's actually_ your _fault_ '. Her stomach somersaulted and her throat closed up. She had eaten a lot for breakfast. Too much. Several bowls of Frosted Flakes with full cream milk, a plateful of raspberry and white chocolate muffins, custard pastries, pain au chocolats, danishes, and to top it all off, two cups of coffee with a spoonful of whipped cream and three sugars, _each_. Enzo blatantly stared at her in repulsion at her gorging, and even Kol, who eats like a horse, asked her if she wanted to slow down. She didn't. Caroline hadn't done it consciously, truly, it had just happened. Something natural, almost, but she knew it was the exact opposite. She felt ill.

Biting back a flagrant frown, the sound of pen to paper filled the room, and then Matt looked up. "How do you feel the increase in your medication dosage has been?" He peered at her carefully, and Caroline quickly masked her face with a look of intelligence, as if she was actually bothering to think upon what he had just asked, rather than her current, overwhelming compulsion to vomit.

Taking in a breath of heavy, sickly sweet air through her nostrils, she leaned her head back, shrugging. "I think it's been fine. I've been a bit drowsy every now and then, but otherwise I'm feeling better." Lying through her straight, white bleached teeth, Caroline hoped he couldn't tell. The surface of her skin itched as her stomach convulsed in her body. Acid rose up her throat. Her peroxide blonde hair stuck to the sweat on her forehead.

He nodded. "That's good, hopefully you'll be used to it in a couple of days." Giving her a warm smile, he tipped his head to the side, and leaned forward. "The session is done, but know that I'm always here for you to talk to, alright?"

She knew. It didn't matter.

Klaus was waiting outside the door for her when she left Matt's office, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and eyes trained on the opposite painting. He jumped a little when she practically stormed out the office. Her heart, and stomach, sank, and once again, Caroline had to put up a façade of okay-ness to hide what she was really feeling. Except this time, it didn't work.

"What's wrong?" He questioned immediately, and as she opened her mouth to respond, he quickly interrupted with, "And don't you dare tell me 'nothing', Caroline." Klaus warned, nostrils already flaring in annoyance at the prospect.

She gritted her teeth. Anger flared in her stomach and expanded, white-hot fury burnt her blood, heating the tips of her fingers till they tingled. Caroline knew she shouldn't do it, say it. But she didn't care. " _Excuse me_?" Her voice was thick but sharp as her rage swelled, Klaus' eyes widened, and he faltered back. She took a step forward. "What did you just say? Because, it sounded like you just told me not to dare tell you that nothing is wrong with me. But I'm not sure I heard correctly, Klaus, so why don't you affirm that for me."

His eyes flickered to where her hands were fisted white, to the quiver in her stance, her snarling lips, and finally, her eyes that told him she was too far-gone. He didn't know why. "What are you-"

"-You didn't talk to me for a week!" Caroline blurted out before she could reign control of her mouth and come out with something a little more sophisticated than her shrieking truth. "A _whole_ week, Klaus, that you spent completely ignoring me! I didn't know why. I didn't know what I did _wrong_. And than poof like that, two days ago you act as though everything is okay again!"

Locked jaw and stiff stance, Klaus looked down. Silent. Morose.

Biting her lip and wiping away pathetically frustrated tears from the corners of her eyes, because Caroline _wasn't_ about to shed tears about how a guy she'd known for little more than a month gave her the silent treatment for a week, no matter how much it hurt. "So, Klaus," she started hoarsely, taking a deep breath, "are you going to fucking tell me why you completely ignored me last week? Or are you going to give me the respect I gave you and not try to intrude upon my issues without any prompting?"

His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and his eyes were wide and wounded and Caroline didn't care nor get the chance to hear his response, because as a sound exited his throat, the door burst open between them. Matt stepped out, arms crossed, and a concerned crease between his brows. "Caroline, Klaus, is there an issue here you would like to talk about with me together?" He started, placating. "You can come into my office now, if you want, I'd be more happy to help."

From the look on his face, Caroline could see that Klaus was seriously considering the prospect, so she quickly intervened saying that she "has a yoga class now, but maybe later?", before twisting around on her heel, and rushing down the hall. The delayed slamming of a door and hurried footsteps after her told Caroline that Klaus must've been coming after her to talk, probably at Matt's request considering the Mikaelson was the most insensitive person ever. She walked faster; almost moving into a light jog, while ignoring the strange looks of nurses and fellow patients, however she could still hear his steps, steady and unwavering. And so, listening to the instinctual feeling that flooded from her heart, rather than her brain, as soon as she saw it, she took a left turn into the female restroom.

She couldn't stop it. She really couldn't. _Fuck_ , it just came out. Emotionally, and physically. Much to her mind's dismay, her muscles worked her over to the toilet stall, which she banged shut, not caring if anyone else was there (there wasn't). Caroline collapsed to her knees, revulsion convulsing through her veins, in sickly pulses that made her feel _dirty_. And sick. Sick. She was sick. She had to get it out.

The porcelain rim was like a long lost friend. The smell of disinfectant and shit wafted up her nostrils like the welcoming sent of her favorite perfume. The cool touch of it to her hands, her forearms, her face, as she rested against it, was like being back in her own bed at home. _Home_. Caroline was almost home. All she had to do was get out the filth that poisoned her from within, and that was the final push over the thresh hold of the entrance.

Extending her index and middle finger, she forced them into the moist warmth of her mouth. Further, and further, back, until her untrimmed nails scraped the flesh of her throat, causing tears to prick her eyes. A gag. Once. Twice. But it wasn't enough. Caroline pushed further back, she couldn't breathe, and she spluttered and her body juddered; however it worked.

Undigested food, stomach acid, and mush; the mixture that made up the vomit that she heaved into the toilet stung her tongue. But she got through it, the sound of her retching filling the tiled and cold room. The stench assaulted her, bitter and sour. The sound of the waste she vomited, as it splashed into the bowl, was vile. But it was out. She was empty, however she was clean again.

And tired. So tired. She always was after she did it. Softly, she rested her head against the seat, slightly lightheaded, trying to regain her breath. Her ears rung and her vision blurred. She didn't allow herself to do anything other than stare blankly at the plastic of the stall wall; she didn't allow herself to think lest her mind bring up the rough truths of her situation.

Caroline stood. Tearing off a square of toilet paper, she wiped around her mouth for any leftover residue. Of course, _of course_ , there was nothing there; Caroline had done such an act too many times in the past to let herself ever get sloppy. She flushed the toilet, watching with hard eyes as the water swirled in, diluting the mixture of bile and half-digested food until it was gone. After opening the door, she made her way over to the sink, turning the faucet on, cupping her hands under the icy stream of water and splashing it onto her flushed face. Moving her lips towards the flow, she rinsed out her mouth so it didn't smell like sick. Other then the wet strips of hair that stuck to her temples, she looked as though she always did: beaming and perky and fine.

However she wasn't fine. And the universe knew it, because the minute she turned around to leave the bathroom, the door swung open revealing a tall figure and she shut her eyes, wincing at the idea of it being a nurse or Matt or _God forbid_ Klaus. Taking a deep breath, she inched her eyes open and… It wasn't any of those people. She didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that it was Kol who had just walked in.

He was brooding over by the door (it obviously ran in the family), not obviously about to approach her but also not moving out of the way so she could leave. Kol was silent, his eyes hard as he stared at her, a tick in his jaw. He looked like shit, and while that wasn't really uncommon among the patients at the center, it was uncommon for Kol. Perhaps he had broken his comb and come to her in his desperation?

"Um..." Caroline started when the pause turned from pregnant to just plain uncomfortable, when his stare started to itch and the dripping of the faucet echoed. "Did you need anything?" She asked dumbly, because he obviously didn't despite her hopes that he was just there for some rudimentary reason, but that was just the kind of person Caroline was. Or at least, was supposed to be.

Kol sniffed, cracked his knuckles. "I need to talk to you about Nik."

She hesitated about to ask him "who the fuck is Nik?" when she realized what was happening. So, she closed up, crossed her arms, shook her head. "Since when did you become your brother's errand boy?" Her voice was acidic.

He didn't even flinch. "Listen, love, it's not like that. I-

"-Well Kol-"

"-If you don't want me to tell Matt about your relapse, you'll listen to what I have to say."

His statement completely stumped her. The air became stagnant, the cold from the tiles beneath her slippers cut through her blood, while sweat immediately beaded from her pores. With wide cyan eyes, Caroline stared at him, her mouth hanging open stupidly, obviously.

But he just tilted his head at her, inhaling deeply through his nose, his lips opening just slightly with his tongue slitting out. "I know that smell, sweetheart, I know the taste of it in the air, hell, I can even bloody well see it from your face, disregarding your obvious binging of food at breakfast today." What he was saying made no sense. It really didn't. There was no scent, there was no taste in the air, she looked fine, and she really hadn't been that obvious at breakfast today, just hungry... _Right_?

"How am I supposed to know that you won't tell Matt after I listen to what you have to say?"

He just laughed, albeit humorlessly, but it was a chuckle nonetheless, and his next words were said with a smirk on his face. "Because, darling, how would that benefit me? I don't care about you."

Kol said it as though it was obvious, and Caroline knew it should've been, he was a fucking narcissist for fucks sake, yet she still felt blood rise up her chest and neck to her face. She must've been spending too much time around the seemingly lesser narcissist, Damon, who appeared to have some remnant of a conscience and ability to feel love, or at least, become attached to someone. _God_ , she had to talk to Bonnie about Kol; she had been spending too much time around him, and he was clearly bad news.

"I only want you to hear what I have to say because I actually may care about Nik, although even _that's_ a stretch. However, I now share a room with him and Stefan and I need my beauty sleep. I highly doubt that'll happen with the two of them complaining about their ladies, one being my sister." His lips curled up in disgust, the muscles in his throat working as though he was resisting a gag. "Now, will you listen, or not?"

Caroline stared at him in steely silence, furious and frustrated and confused. She didn't know what to say, how to respond, the thought of allowing him to 'blackmail' her with the information made her feel physically ill. But there was nothing she could do, she was helpless to his threats, because she sure as hell didn't want Matt finding out about what happened, or she would be in deep shit. And so, she gave the devil incarnate Mikaelson a curt nod, teeth grinding and toes curling.

He immediately started, sparing no punches. "Growing up Nik was abused by Mikael." Caroline's jaw fell open, and when she was to ask who Mikael was, she was once again beaten to it. "We all were, to be honest, but our dear old daddy targeted Nik more than everyone else. We don't really know why." A lump formed in Caroline's throat at the thought of Klaus having been through so much trauma, at the way Kol was speaking so distantly, unfeeling. She had _no idea_. "At the beginning of middle school, an older girl named Tatia became one of his closest friends. He came to her every beck and call, and in return she isolated him and ensured that he felt as though she was the only person who cared about him. She was a manipulative and spiteful little thing."

Kol let out an empty laugh. Caroline swallowed. "Why are you telling me this?" She asked thickly. He didn't answer.

"He was so in love with her. It was obvious and sickening. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she left for the same college as Elijah, leaving Nik alone and pining. She asked Elijah out, he accepted, they got married a little while after. Nik's heart was broken."

Caroline repeated her same question.

"Because, Tatia desires a divorce from our elder and ignorant brother. Niklaus found out last week, and he caved in on himself."

And then it all made sense. Why he'd distanced himself from her, why he didn't even want to talk about it, why he was so sensitive when she'd had her outburst. She had been _so_ out of line. Her stomach shuddered in her abdomen, and burning rose up her throat. The air was suddenly thin, and she felt lightheaded. Her breaths were shallow, the lights bright, the chill in the air _so_ biting, _too_ biting. She had just yelled at him for being sad. Caroline had shouted and hissed at Klaus because he was depressed because a girl that emotionally abused him then married his brother wanted a divorce from said brother. She had made it about herself. She thought he was intentionally hurting her. In reality, she had hurt him.

"He likes you, a lot." Kol blurted out, momentarily halting the room from spinning. "I don't know why, because you seem like a half-way decent person who, despite our circumstances, doesn't seem absolutely bonkers. Don't ever mention the name Aurora to him, by the way. You scarily resemble Rebekah- ugh, let's not even get into _that_. But I can see it. It's only been a month, yet for Niklaus all it took was the first moment he met you and he was done for."

With those words Kol just piled on weights onto Caroline's shoulders, tons at a time. However, then at the same time, she felt a lightness spring at her core. Something that swelled, making the air in her lungs seem sharper but cleaner, more potent with oxygen. The paradox of what Kol was saying that Klaus felt to her was not lost to Caroline; it was just mixed up.

"All I can say is don't take advantage of him. Or you'll pay for it."

An underlying threat was in his words. "What's that supposed to mean?" Caroline breathed, stuck between being speechless and laughing at his little intimidation game.

He shook his head, lips curling into smirk so bitter that she could feel it sting her tongue. Kol was noiseless, seemingly chewing on the words in his mouth, pondering his response and testing her patience, or curiosity. Kol wasn't her friend, he annoyed her, she didn't know why she was still there, why she was waiting; yet she didn't hate him. She didn't know him, she didn't trust him, she didn't know why he was telling her what he was telling her. Truthfully, in that moment in her life Caroline didn't know _anything_. She didn't believe him when he said he hardly cared about Klaus but she believed him when he told her all that Klaus had been through. She didn't know why she _cared_ , she didn't know why she cared for Klaus, or why she cared that Elena had tried to kill herself, she didn't know why she was the way she was, just that it hurt. A lot.

_She didn't know, she didn't know, she didn't know._

Caroline was empty and hollow, manufactured and artificial and trapped in a shell of synthetic material that welded over her skin, her heart, her mind, over all those years she spent in institutions, the medications, and the relapses. Sleepless nights, vomit stained clothes, thinning hair and thinning skin, sunken eyes and passing out. Therapists came and went like the moon changed and she hadn't had friends, not anymore, only her faith and hope that this couldn't be all there was to life.

She was smart, or at least, she had been; she had a life. She had _the_ life. With a 4.0 GPA, part-time job at the mayors office, cheerleading practice every Thursday, a plethora of friends around her, middle-class suburban upbringing with the best mom anyone could ever ask for, she had everything she needed. And yet... _Then,_ she felt it. The weight. It was so sudden. Caroline didn't know what triggered it, not really. At fifteen years old, after being an extremely _okay_ person, probably even unjustifiably over-confident at times, it happened. Who would've thought that someone could just go from liking themselves to loathing themselves so quickly? Before, Caroline would've thought "psh, _impossible_ ". Not impossible. _Possible_.

First she started with hardly eating anything. But she was so thirsty all the time, and drank a lot to drown out the hunger. She had been taking multiple bathroom breaks during classes, and in week two she almost fucking wet herself when the wonderfully shitty Mr. Smith wouldn't let her leave geometry class for the third time. She took up smoking, to curb her hunger, however she hated smelling like an ashtray all the time, as well as the actual act of smoking the cigarettes. Laxatives; those didn't even last a week, primarily because of the same issues as the not eating, but with shit rather than piss.

The vomiting was the only way. And it worked. No one suspected her consistent restroom breaks after every meal, attributing it to her wanting to 'powder her nose' because apparently people thought she was _that_ vain. The loss of weight could be blamed on cheerleading or stress. So could her tiredness. It was when she started getting lightheaded with occasional fainting spells from 'dehydration', when she started losing her hair in large yellow chunks, when all her nails bled and cracked and split down the middle, when she was pale, gaunt, weak looking, people started getting suspicious.

The seizure was what told people; " _oh my fuck_ , she has a problem".

It took Caroline a little longer to realize that, perhaps one could say she _still_ hasn't.

It had only taken less than a year for her life to fall apart around her when she was at the mere age of sixteen going on seventeen. She was broken, and then fixed, but not into what she was before, rather, a cheap imitation. One that at first glance was fine, yet looking a little closer, you'd see how defective it really was. Most would ask for a refund, but you can't ask for refund on your life. Caroline couldn't. She lived on, trying, caring, constantly, a little too hard sometimes. Maybe because she was scared that someone would see her malfunction, or maybe because she had nothing else to do.

She had no path. That had ended from brick to gravel to dirt long ago, and now just was just trekking around, lost, trying to find something or someone else. Caroline didn't know what she doing, and while not many nineteen year olds do, she was a different kind of lost. The kind where nothing around you sticks, not people not feelings, not even her medication has stayed at a constant. She didn't know anything. Perhaps that was why she was still there, waiting to hear what Kol had to say, because at least it'd be one less thing on her list.

"Once you're in the family, you can't get out. We don't forget." Caroline furrowed her brows at his ominous words, at the almost frantic look in his eyes. His words seemed dramatic, but it didn't look as though _he_ was being dramatic; in fact it was probably the most serious she had ever seen him. "Remember that for the next interaction you have with Niklaus, love, because it'll make all the difference."

And with that, Kol turned around on his heel and stormed out of the girl's restroom, leaving Caroline alone to think of his words.

She _did_ , agonizing over what the hell his warning, not threat, _warning_ meant. He had just all but said that she should… 'be' with Klaus, and then did a complete U-turn in a weird attempt to get her to want to do anything but. And she didn't even know why. Sure, their family had always come off odd, however Kol made them sound dangerous, and she didn't know if that was something she wanted herself (or Bonnie for that matter, who she just had to talk to) caught up in. As she pressed her weight against the sinks, cradling her head in her hands, anguish toiled at the bottom of her gut although it didn't make her ill, just uncomfortable.

She'd have preferred to be sick.

Caroline decided that it'd be best to go back to her room, otherwise sooner or later a nurse would be on the lookout for her, as it was required they check in with all patients every half hour, for safety reasons. She didn't want them to find her in the bathroom. But of course with her luck, it just so happened that in the exact moment that she was to leave, Katherine, of all people, entered through the door. Not only that, of course, because Nora was trailing in closely behind.

"I will do _anything_ to get her back into this ward." Nora's voice was laced with desperation, her eyes burning green and damp with tears, red rimmed and hopeless. She was absolutely defeated, even Caroline could tell that from just a glance. However Katherine didn't care as she pranced on towards the mirrors, as though Nora wasn't even there. Caroline watched the scene in horror. "Please, it's not hard to just tell me how you and Kai got out of there."

"No."

Nora flinched as though she'd been slapped across the face, Katherine ran her hand through her long waves and rearranged her bangs mindlessly; Caroline felt as though she was intruding, but still didn't leave. A whimper escaped Nora's lips; her eyes flickered shut while the tears continued on falling down her cheeks. "I love her, I _know_ Mary Lou. She doesn't belong there." Her voice was hoarse and coarse and raw, and with knuckles white from a fisted hand, she opened her eyes to meet Katherine's, whose were watching her through the reflection, callous.

"See, Eleanora, I just don't _get_ this infatuation you have for Mary Louise. You've been following me around all day, desperately and pathetically begging me to help you help a woman who I only know to be the most insufferable person I have ever met, and trust me, I've been here a long time." Katherine stepped away from the mirror, rolling her head on her shoulders causing Caroline to wince at the sound of cracking that ricocheted to her ears. And like a vulture, did Katherine begin circling Nora, her pink lips a sneer. "It's funny, she never talked about you… In fact, all she ever did was complain to me was about how every single moment she's been here was worse than the next, that it was the most miserable place she's ever had the disadvantage to being at, that every single person here is-"

"- _Enough_ , Katherine!" Caroline would've felt sick to her stomach if it weren't empty, but rather, it was clenching so tightly in her abdomen that it was painful. There were two brunettes before her, and one of them was one of the most despicable people Caroline had ever met, and she was wondering how she hadn't seen it earlier. "What the _hell_ is wrong with you!?"

Katherine was quiet for a change as she turned to meet Caroline's scowl. Her brow rose, her hands moved to cup her waist, one foot jutting out as she tilted her head at an angle, as if to inspect the blonde closer. Her once doe brown and now malevolent coal-like eyes cut through her, fires raging while her expression remained neutral. "I didn't quite see you there, Caroline." She responded, in a careful way that told Caroline it was all but true.

She didn't know what Katherine's game was, why she had suddenly shut down at Caroline's interruption just as she was getting all riled up, but Caroline didn't want any part of it. And yet despite herself and her own desires, she moved forward, past Katherine and towards Nora, who remained behind remained behind the formers back, still sobbing, probably unwillingly, but silent. Tearing paper towels from the dispenser, and folding them as Nora watched her blearily, she wordlessly dabbed them on the brunette's damp cheeks, ignoring Katherine's burning eye on her back. They had barely interacted with one another, Nora and Caroline; they didn't even _know_ each other. However, there was a quiet companionship between the two in that moment, one that quickly knitted a bond between them through the miniscule act of standing up to a bully and wiping away shed tears. It was nothing and it was everything. Nora gave her a shaky smile, a thanks.

"I was sorry to hear about Elena."

Caroline's fingers instantly tightened around the tissues, balling them up. Her heart was in her throat, and she could sense Nora's eye trying to seek out her own, probably to give Caroline the same kind of comfort she was being given. Yet, Caroline just continued on in her actions, more concentrated than before, than necessary. She avoided anyone's eyes; she didn't avoid a retort. "You can't lie for shit, Katherine."

A titter twinkled from Katherine's lips, and it was then that Caroline, regrettably, decided to turn around. "Ouch." Was all it seemed Katherine had to say as she raked her gaze up and down Caroline, thoughtful, and pursed her lips. Feeling uncomfortable under her stare, Caroline could feel Nora tug at her sleeve, whispering, "she's not worth it, I'd know". But she remained unmoving, and then Katherine decided to say what was on her mind. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that, Caroline, do you know why?"

It must've been a rhetorical question, because she didn't even give Caroline a chance to answer or just flat out leave the restroom before she continued on.

"You remind me of a lesser version of myself. Shockingly enough, because of that reason I actually like you, Caroline."

Caroline was speechless.

"I know I can make you better, I can make you more."

Katherine stood there speaking those grand words, seemingly the most genuine either of the others had ever seen her, with a blunt stare yet an almost gentle smile, despite the heinous implications of her intentions. Caroline's mouth fell open, dumbly, not only wondering where the _fuck_ all of that came from, but also where the hell Katherine got the idea that Caroline wanted to be her… 'apprentice'. And then she thought about it more. Her offer initially seemed selfless, however taking her character into account, it was also smug, grandiose, vain and of course self-serving. What she wanted with Caroline wasn't _for_ Caroline, it was for herself; and while Caroline hardly knew anything about Katherine but for her key personality traits, _this_ , she _knew_.

Nonetheless, it was tempting.

Because if there was anything Katherine had that Caroline wanted, it was her confidence. It was luxurious and rich, diffusing through her every step, breath, and glance. It was instantaneous, identifiable by any one and every one, completely opulent in her. Katherine had issues, they all did, but she just didn't seem to be the kind of person who belonged there because of the sureness she had with every waking task she completed. Some could call it arrogance, not confidence, however whatever it was, Caroline wanted it; she was just so sick of feeling ill in her own skin, of waking up every day and wishing it was someone else in the reflection. She was weak, Caroline was _so_ weak; she smiled too much, laughed too hard, apologized too much, tried too hard, and gave in too much. She was the way she was because of all those reasons and more. And she hated herself for it. Caroline didn't want to, she wanted to like herself, as Katherine did.

It still wasn't enough.

"No." She spat out at the unsurprised brunette, then instinctively but clumsily grabbing a noiseless Nora's hand and jerking her towards the doorway. "Go fuck yourself, Katherine."

"If I could, I wouldn't be here."

The sharp response only further repelled Caroline from any association with Katherine, and after letting out a sickened groan and rolling her eyes; she let go of Nora, who she knew was most certainly right behind her, and planted her palms flat on the door. From the corner of her eye, she could see a Cheshire smile almost grotesquely splitting Katherine's lips apart, and aggravation distorting Nora's features into something Caroline wouldn't want to be on the other side of. The exit swung open under her force, and a wave of cool air feathered over her skin, a stark contrast to the stagnantly tense atmosphere in the room behind her.

One step over the threshold; the door slipping from her fingers.

Her voice.

"Oh, and tell Elena that Kai sends his regards."

A chill ran through her blood. Nora continued around, forward, and on, unbeknownst. The door rocked behind Caroline's stilled frame.

"Me too, actually. We both find it a shame that things turned out the way they did for her."

She wasn't exactly sure why, but fight or flight mode was activated within Caroline at Katherine's words. Flight won. And Caroline walked away, not entirely knowing why she felt so disturbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so, so, so sorry that it's taken so long for me to update! I honestly didn't think it'd take so long, but then again, I didn't anticipate that my life would be so hectic at the moment. Hopefully it calms down once I get into some semblance of a flow, so keep your fingers crossed please, I need it. Although, to be fair, I've spent a lot of time of this chapter, trying to hone in on my writing skills and make it ~richer~ after being inspired by some fics as well as books I've read. Hope it's kind of shown in the chapter.
> 
> A massive thanks to everyone who has read, kudosed (? is that a word), subscribed, bookmarked, and reviewed this story! It now has over 1,200 hits, and 60 kudos, which is giant for me, so I'm really proud. If you have a minute or so, I'd appreciate it at gigantor levels if you leave a comment or a kudos if you haven't yet. Subscribe or bookmark if you would like to know about future updates (that hopefully won't take as long as this one did), if you haven't already! Thank you so much for reading and I hope you all enjoyed the a-little-longer-than-usual chapter. X
> 
>  
> 
> **Next Chapter - I have begun with Rebekah trying to mind her own business, as usual, in the recreation room, and someone tries to 'console' her over what her dorm-mate attempted. She can see they have ulterior motives. A conversation ensues.**  
>  **Klaus tries to explain himself to Caroline, and this time she will hear him out.**  
>  **Elena has woken up to the sight of Alaric and Jeremy by her beside.**


	11. Retrograde

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you need a quick refresher about what happened last chapter but can't be bothered to go back and read over it, I understand. So here's what I call:
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> _Previously, on One Person's Craziness Is Another Person's Reality..._  
>  **  
> _Damon somehow managed to sneak into the medical ward to visit Elena in the ICU, however couldn't manage to get through the double door barrier. He decided to wait until Alaric and Jeremy arrived to see her. Lo and behold, however, he wasn't the only one to come and see Elena; so did Bonnie. They sit down together, and after some emotional talking with one another, Bonnie discovers that Damon doesn't know why Elena did what she did, because it wasn't he that the nurse saw visit Elena in her room before she tried to kill herself. They see Alaric and Jeremy, but decide not to tag along with the men, who look absolutely destroyed. Besides, they had bigger issues to deal with._
> 
>  
> 
> _After a heavy therapy session with Matt, Caroline clashes with Klaus over him blatantly avoiding and ignoring her for a couple of days, before suddenly acting like normal. Overwhelmed by emotion, Caroline runs off to the restroom, and purges. After she briefly recovers, Kol approaches her to explain Klaus' behavior and set off a warning. And then, Katherine and Nora walk in just as she was about to leave, and she overhears and witnesses something awful.._

It must've been when she felt his breathing on the back of her neck that she finally turned around.

"It's a shame about your dorm mate," Kai began sorrowfully, but the deep crease forming between his brows wasn't able to distract from the way his mouth was a wide split grin. It was ridiculous, almost comical, really. He ignored how Rebekah stepped back and away from him after realizing he was much too close for comfort, and her eyes narrowed when he mildly moved closer, continuing on, "Did you _ever_ get any vibes that Eleanor was considering doing such a thing?" His voice was one of incredulity, and his face now distorted into something that was probably meant to be sadness, yet the emotion didn't even make it to Kai's eyes. They were just blank.

And Rebekah wasn't buying whatever the walking oxymoron was churning out, either, responding with a curt and tart, "Her name's _Elena_."

He licked his lips, shoulders slumping down further (if that was even possible), and mouth twisting into a pout. "It's tragic, I've never been so close to such a loss," Kai mused, completely ignoring Rebekah's remark and peering over her shoulder at what she was painting, "well, at least, not since my mother miscarried what would've been baby number 4 and-"

He stopped in his rambling when Rebekah raised her hand in the air sharply, catching the attention of the art teacher, whose distracted expression turned to one of confusion, not just because she saw the two of them standing there together when Kai should've been over at his easel painting, but because of the look in Rebekah's eyes that told Ms. Celeste " _please just call me Celeste, Ms. Dubois is my mother_ " Dubois that something was wrong. "Yes, Rebekah?" She voiced, moving from behind her desk and forward, pensive, her expressive eyes watery and her thick eyebrows slanting down towards the lines between them.

"Kai is bothering me."

Celeste frowned, lacing her fingers together, her gaze flicking between them. As she parted her lips, the devil began to speak. "Oh, Rebekah!" He began, ridiculously, flamboyantly. "You _know_ how much I admire your brother's Nik's painting, but we're in a different class. I would try to transfer to his, but I have the 'learning how to listen well' class in his time slot, and I'm just, well, you know, too embarrassed to ask him to mentor me to paint. I aspire to paint as well as him! But because I can't hover behind him, I thought maybe good painting runs in the familial genes, if you know what I'm saying. I mean, good looks obviously do because you're like, _really_ pretty, Rebekah."

But Celeste had put up with enough of Kai's shit before to look past his strangely charismatic and muddled monologue. "Get back to your easel, Kai. Leave Rebekah alone or I'll have no choice but to remove you from this class." After the warning she instantly spun away, not even caring to see whether he would try to apologize, her long silken cardigan flowing up behind her like a cape (she _had_ just saved Rebekah) as her words hung heavily in the air.

He evaporated from her side, silent, _forgotten_. Picking up her paintbrush, Rebekah happily resumed, and then immediately stopped after the paint hit the canvas, the bristles at the end smashing against the thick glob of paint. She lifted her eyes to see Hayley's staring back at her; heavy bagged but wide wide open, almost urgent. And unlike most people, even when Rebekah met them, the brunette didn't flinch away, she held it tightly until Rebekah eventually diverted, completely unnerved. Her paintbrush had slipped down the canvas, leaving a red trail down the landscape of a distant orange horizon, yet for some strange reason Rebekah wasn't too bothered by it. Instead, as she continued on, feeling distracted, a light itch that wouldn't leave, lead in the pit of her tummy, a discomfort in her own skin.

The class ended with her adding not a single new brush stroke to her art after that.

She was the first out the door, hurrying and shoving past the people who milled about, hoping that she'd avoid any more prying from Kai or staring from Hayley. Rebekah knew she had yoga group next, and then debating, but she was in no mood for either, to be honest. And so, she made her way to her dorm, the room she had avidly avoided being in for any other reason than sleeping since what Elena tried to do in there. It wasn't that she cared; she didn't, not really. They weren't close, her and Elena. The brunette had tried at first, yet when she saw Rebekah had no interest in being friends with the human equivalent of soggy white bread, she toned it down a bit. They had always managed to stay civil, however.

And still, there was just something haunting about having a bed next to one soaked in death and depression.

The door creaked open as usual. Rebekah had tried speaking to one of the nurses about getting someone to oil the hinges, but to no avail. She stepped across the tiled floor to her freshly made bed. She ran her fingers over the silken duvet covers, the rich patterning of maroon and sapphire sliding through her fingers. Ever so slowly, Rebekah settled herself upon the mattress, leaning against the wall, staring across the room at the empty bed. It was stripped clean of all linen, probably still in the process of washing the bodily fluids from it. Her eyes wandered to the nightstand, to the framed picture of a body and a girl and a woman and a man; a family, probably. Elena's family, although Rebekah knew that only half if it currently remained. In two corners of the frame were small photos with frayed edges and fading color. One was of a red head with a smile in her eyes and a baby in her arms, the other, a man who held a book proudly in front of him.

She couldn't see close enough to discern the full faces of these important people to Elena, but it was enough to knot a lump in Rebekah's throat as she realized; she felt _sad_. Sad that Elena did what she did, sad that she hadn't tried hard enough with her, sad that she was stuck with the bloody girl as a roommate in the first place. Rebekah realized that you didn't really have to be friends with someone to have a bond with them. And she seemed to have one with Elena, or at least, the semblance of one.

"Hey."

Stefan leaned in the doorway, careful. He felt as though he was intruding upon something, the way he found her with welled up eyes and bed sheets in her fists, yet the look on her face when she saw him, they way it just unwound, let go, relaxed, told him he could stay.

"You look tired."

A snort broke from Rebekah's mouth. She looked at him dryly, "the pot calling the kettle black."

He chuckled and walked forward, seating himself down beside her, shaking his head. "You know what I mean." Rebekah regarded him, with his forest eyes and 'hero hair' (as Damon called it). Stefan settled beside her, resting his back against the wall, his shoulder touching hers. Letting out a breath, he met her stare and squinted. "What?" The corner of his mouth turned up into a knowing smirk.

"You're a handsome man, Stefan Salvatore."

"And you're a beautiful woman, Rebekah Mikaelson, if not the most."

They could feel each other's breaths feathering over their cheeks, the body warmth that dug deep through their clothes, the crystal cut jewels of eyes diving into one another. And she noticed the bruises beneath his eyes, plum plump skin swelling beneath his most stunning feature that were bloodshot and pained.

His eyes fell to her lips, but Rebekah shook her head, resting her hand to his and bringing it down to her shoulder. "Sleep, Stefan, rest." She whispered, stroking her fingers against his cheek as he wordlessly shuffled beside her, nuzzling his face against her shirt and letting out a long breath. "Or at least try to."

Her free hand was grabbed by his wandering one, and Stefan cradled it to his chest. Rebekah didn't necessarily expect him to be able to fall asleep; she wasn't foolish enough to believe that an insomniac could be 'cured' by just being able to snuggle beside a woman he was attracted to, but she wanted to at least feel like she could do something that could perhaps help someone else. As well as that, though, she hadn't been sleeping the best as of late, in her horrid room. With Stefan beside her, she thought that maybe she could replace that association of her bedroom from something awful to something warmer.

"Is he asleep?"

Hayley hovered behind the threshold to the room, wringing her hands out in front of her, green eyes wide and anxious. Rebekah licked her lips, glancing away from the girl and towards Stefan who she knew was wide-awake as he began to stir. For some reason, she tightened her hold on his hand until it was enough to be painful, then murmuring a "don't move" as she let go. He followed. Rebekah nodded.

"I wanted to catch you alone."

Rebekah gave her a small, tight smile. "Well we may as well be alone; he's sound asleep, hopefully having his first proper sleep in months." The brunette still hovered in the doorway, a nervous twitch in her movements. Now, Rebekah didn't know Hayley at all (as she never had really cared to), however from the little that she _did_ know, her current behavior wasn't normal. _That_ , and obviously the fact that she was actively seeking out Rebekah, troubled her. "Please," she nodded towards Elena's desolate bed across, "sit."

Settling down on the edge of the mattress, rather than instigating the conversation, Hayley stared down at her hands.

"What was it you wanted to speak with me about?"

"I think that Katherine had something to do with what Elena did."

Rebekah's blood ran cold. Stefan tensed beside her. Swallowing repeatedly to try and lubricate her suddenly intensely dry throat, Rebekah frowned at Hayley. "Why would you think that?"

Her small, thin fingers fisted against her palms, and her eyes hardened as she tried to answer Rebekah's question. "Last week I accidently came across a hidden stock of pills in a jar in my room's bookcase, the room I share with Katherine." When Rebekah looked underwhelmed, Hayley continued on. "I didn't know what they were for, so I didn't ask. But I noticed today that they were all gone."

Elena had overdosed on pills.

Rebekah thought that she probably had somehow managed to stop taking her prescription sometime around two weeks ago, when she began withdrawing from all around her. However, Kol had told her that Bonnie had said Elena had probably been stocking up on them since day one, as two weeks worth of the pill dosage Rebekah knew Elena was on would not have been enough to get her as close to death as she was. But that didn't make sense. Elena had doing so well those first few weeks, and _sure_ , she could have been acting; yet Rebekah knew that wasn't possible due to how persistent Elena was in trying to snag her as a friend despite her cold shoulder. Acting happy didn't extend to trying to be friends with someone who obviously didn't want to know you.

What Hayley was saying added up in all but one aspect; _why_? Why would Katherine hoard her pills and give them all to Elena in a premeditated attempt to get her to kill herself? What reasoning did she have? As far as Rebekah knew, Katherine had never so much as had a proper interaction with Elena, let alone get to know her well enough to hate her so much. And if she didn't have any at all…

It was a terrifying thought; that Katherine would go to such lengths to kill someone she didn't even know.

"You must tell Matt." Rebekah blurted out.

Hayley's frown deepened. "He's not gonna believe me."

"It doesn't matter if he believes you or not. It's a serious claim, one he'll be obliged to investigate, and through that the truth should come out."

A bitter smile appeared on Hayley's lips. "You have a little too much faith in the system, Rebekah. I _know_ places like these. If they let someone like Kai come in here, then they're not going to care about Elena because they obviously don't care about us." The cynicism in her voice and words didn't shock Rebekah, according to what little she knew about the woman across from her, but she didn't care.

"If you don't tell him, _I_ will."

"Fine then, Rebekah!" Hayley suddenly exploded, her bloodshot eyes briefly widened out of her hollow face violently as fury overtook her, then it seemed she had gotten herself under control, and her features were masked with her signature indifference as she crossed her arms. "I don't care. Go tell Matt. But know that nothing will be done, at least by the clinic. Matt'll try, I'm sure; he's the only good thing here. But the higher ups who actually run this place will probably get rid of him once they figure out someone is onto them, and what they're doing to us."

It was in that moment that Rebekah began contemplating if Hayley had been misdiagnosed, as it appeared she had some kind of paranoid schizophrenia.

"This place is evil, and once my six months here are finished, I'll be waving you all goodbye as you sit here, rotting away. I'm not doing _anything_ that will prolong my designated time here."

Rebekah was breathless as she said, "You're insane."

"Not as insane as you are to think that anything will be done about all of this." Hayley bit back quickly, her lips twisting into a snarl. "Crazy? Yes, that I am from being here. But you're the insane one."

There was silence in the room, thin yet harsh, and Rebekah and Hayley regarded each other coldly. The brunette's face was sallow, her skin ashen and eyes red and deeply bagged purple. She looked ill. Her appearance was starkly different to what she looked like when she had arrived, which really wasn't what should have been happening. Perhaps it was the knowledge of what Katherine did that was weighing down on her, or perhaps she truly was being driven crazy by being there.

"Why did you come to me?"

"You're her roommate."

"Other than the fact that Elena isn't even my friend and better options would've been Damon, Bonnie, Caroline or someone who can actually tolerate her, that's not what I meant." Rebekah shook her head and took a heavy breath. " _Why_ did you come to me?"

Hayley clenched her fists tightly and pressed her lips into a line, her green eyes flickering down to the floor beneath her feet. Rebekah waited for an answer, and there was a long moment of hesitation on Hayley's side, where she just gnawed down on her lower lip, staring at the _fascinating_ pattern of the tiles beneath her feet. Then she looked up. "I thought it was important information that needed to be known… Caroline, Bonnie and Damon probably would've gone to knife Katherine the minute they heard it. I didn't trust them to be mature with the information."

"Oh, and you _trust_ me?" Rebekah snorted at what was coming from her lips, because it was a load of pure, unadulterated bullshit. "Why didn't you go to Matt, then? You must have at least a little bit of trust in him, after having to have therapy sessions with him for weeks, even if the most you talked about was the weather and what you had for tea."

"Like I _said_ ," Hayley retorted, her voice sharper this time, lips twisting into a snarl, "I didn't and still don't think he'll believe me."

"What made you think _I'd_ believe you?"

Hayley faltered, seemingly lost for words, and Rebekah had obviously found a hole in her little excuse.

"I don't think you care for justice for Elena." She began, studying the brunette across from her closely, analyzing her in the only way she knew, critically. "Not really, at least. I just think you wanted to get what you knew off your chest so you could move the job of something being done about it off of you and onto someone else. You told me not because I'm Elena's roommate, everyone and their mum knows we are not friends, but because you didn't think I'd want to do anything about it."

She didn't respond, rather, huffed, re-crossing her arms, and pursing her lips. Her eyes were narrowed into slits, her teeth almost bared. Rebekah could easily see the anger her words were causing, reaffirming to her the truthfulness of them. Before another word could escape Rebekah's mouth, Hayley quickly rose, making for the door to leave.

"I respect self-preservation, Hayley." The statement made her figure still. "It's what got me through my whole life, otherwise I'd be in a worse place than here, if anywhere at all. As a result, you may have a valid reason for not wanting to do anything about Katherine's actions. However there is a line between saving yourself and having some morality. I've toed the line before, but _you_ ," Rebekah shook her head at Hayley's tensed up back. "You've clearly sprinted right past it without a second thought."

What sounded like a growl escaped Hayley's lips, and she twisted her head to shoot Rebekah an ugly look.

"Perhaps there's some truth to the reasoning behind your admittance here as a felon, or maybe you're just broken, but you clearly have more to talk about with Matt than just the weather and what you had for tea."

Her eyes flickered as she blinked, and Rebekah watched as Hayley's body completely deflated, as her expression blanked, and her eyes glazed over. She turned away, running her hand over the slender handle of the door, before giving a shrug. "Do what you want, _think_ what you want, Rebekah. I don't need a speech from you." She stepped over the threshold; the door whining as she slowly closed it behind her back. "I just don't care."

The minute the door clicked, Stefan's eyes snapped open and he sat up, cradling Rebekah's stunned face between his hands. "Are you okay?" was the first thing that tumbled out from between his lips.

Gathering herself quickly, she waved his hands away, rolling her eyes and scoffing. "Don't be ridiculous, I'm fine." Rebekah shuffled forward, so her feet now touched the ground and she perched on the edge of her bed.

Stefan's voice came from behind her a moment later, "what are we going to do?"

She shook her head, held it in her hands, closed her eyes, shrugged, sighed, and then; "I don't know."

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

"I'm sorry."

Caroline's eyes shot up from the glossy magazine she was reading, and Klaus couldn't help but liken her to a deer caught in the headlights. Nonetheless, her wide, dazed stare immediately melted into something else. What? Klaus didn't care to analyze it, as that kind of mechanical thinking didn't necessarily seem to work with Caroline.

"Stop," he held his finger to her open lips that had moved to speak. They were pink, and soft, and smooth against the pad of his finger, which was callused from holding countless paintbrushes over countless canvases. He had to force himself to _focus_ as his mind began to wonder about what his lips would feel like over hers. "You had your turn yesterday. I respected you, now let me speak."

Tentatively, he moved his finger away. She nodded quietly, swinging her legs off the side of the couch so there was enough space for him to sit down, and he did. Tossing the magazine to the side as Klaus settled down beside her, Caroline folded her hands in her lap, and watched him intently.

"Those weeks where I was 'ignoring' you, so to say, I had recently discovered certain news of something that happened that outside of this place, that affected me _deeply_." As he spoke, he noticed how hollow her face looked, and the cloudiness of her usually bright eyes, the way she fidgeted with a loose thread in her hands and bit down on her lower lip. Klaus swallowed. "It was nothing you had done, Caroline. It wasn't your fault at all, but I needed space from everyone around me, love, as I needed to… process, things. I didn't tell you because I had thought about it _constantly_ until I didn't. I did not want to bring it back up again."

And she nodded. He stared. A breath. Time passed and neither said anything. Until-

"You understand?" Klaus couldn't help the lilt in his voice that betrayed his shock at her tame reaction, and when she once again nodded in that dumb way, he squinted his eyes at her, now skeptical. "And you forgive me? You can speak now." The last bit was so he could hear perhaps more of an explanation to her sudden understanding of the past situation.

Caroline gave him a small smile. "I understand." She opened her mouth and took a breath, it then snapping shut, as she seemed to reconsider what she was to say next. But when she saw the distrustful look on his face, she elaborated. "I've been through hard times as well when I've just wanted to be alone, I shouldn't have blown up like that and tried to force you to explain yourself. It was _wrong_. Just a- uh, heat of the moment kind of thing. I'm sorry."

While her response made perfect sense, it didn't, and he was dissatisfied with it. Yet, rather than voice his concerns, he gave her one of those mute nods she had been dishing him out with, before muttering a thanks and excuse, then rising from his seat and leaving. He made his way over to the other side of the room, ignoring what he knew were her eyes on his back, towards the water fountain, where Kol currently stood with Bonnie.

"…Ah, see, darling, that's where you're wrong." His brother sweet talked the girl, who leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, meeting his smirk with one of her own. "I'm not _just a fan_ , of Tina Fey, no. She's my inspiration. For so long, she was purely the reason I got up in the mornings, although now I am aware of my greatness so I no longer need a motive to wake up other than my self."

Klaus scowled at how Bonnie stupidly laughed in response to the utter drivel that was pouring from Kol's mouth. He sipped at the water, thinking over Caroline's odd reaction. However, it wasn't for long, because someone decided upon that moment to clamp their hand down on his shoulder.

"Hey buddy! Saw you over there talking to Blondie, she sure didn't look too happy when you left!" Damon grinned in what was probably supposed to be a friendly manner as Klaus twisted away from his touch. "What'd you say to her?"

Klaus bared his teeth, then turning his back, repulsed by the person before him. "Piss off or shut the fuck up."

"Aw, come on, don't be like that! I just asked a question!"

"Listen, mate, if you don't sod off you'll regret it."

Damon cradled the space over his heart in mock pain. "' _Mate_ '? Is that all I am to you now? Uh- I- what _happened_ to me being 'the Fun Brother'?" It hardly took more that his pathetic presence to grate Klaus' patience let alone his tragic words and jarring voice.

And he was in no mood to put up with his shit any longer. However as quickly as Klaus had swung his fist back to meet Damon's face was it wrenched even further back, by who he soon saw to be his little brother, who too looked at the Salvatore before him with distaste written across his face.

A faux gasp escaped the latter's mouth. "You were about to punch _me_? How _could_ you, buddy?"

"I wouldn't be so mocking, darling," Kol jeered, releasing his brother's wrist and flicking his eyes up and down Damon. "Nik here has dislocated my jaw and shattered my cheekbone with that fist of his, and rest assured the next time he goes to punch you, and there _will_ be a next time if you continue on with your behavior, I won't be here to hold him back."

Any humor that had been on Damon's face melted away to snarling features, and as his hands fisted by his sides and as his foot lifted in front of the other into a stride, Bonnie jumped out in front of him, smacking her hand on his chest. "What the fuck, Damon!?" She bellowed harshly, shoving him back roughly as he was taken off put. Her upper lip curled when she looked back at him after a quick glance to the Mikaelsons, and she murmured a quiet but not quiet enough, "I was _working_ on it."

And Kol's face darkened. Klaus saw his body stiffen and the defensive cross of his arms. "Working on what?" He spat out, anger tinting his voice, but not enough to betray how upset Klaus knew his brother was.

Her shoulder's sagged, and Bonnie sighed, running a hand over her face before sharply elbowing Damon who immediately left, metaphorical tail between his legs. She looked up to them, exhaustion running free in her eyes, before shaking her head and breathing out, "did either of you visit Elena in her room before she attempted to kill herself?"

Klaus frowned. " _Why_?"

"It doesn't matter, brother." The words were bitter and Kol's face sour as he regarded Bonnie. "No, Nik was too busy brooding by himself that day and I have no interest in Elena, therefore no reason to waste time on her."

Bonnie locked eyes with him for a long moment, thoughtful and cautious, and Klaus just watched as his brother stared back, blank yet unfailing. After a couple more moments of this silence, she nodded, seemingly resigned. "Okay."

"No," Kol immediately countered, stepping forward as she had began to walk away. "What if I'm lying?"

She tilted her head to the side as she faced him once more. " _Are_ you?"

He hesitated, and then- "No, but you don't know that?"

A strange look overtook Bonnie's features, one that Klaus noted was soft and almost sad, the corners of her lips lifting into what could be called some semblance of a smile, before she gave a small shake of her head and shrugged. "I trust you, Kol." And those were her parting words as in the next breath; she was gone.

Klaus waited behind his brother, watching the muscles in his back and arms work through his shirt even as he stood so still. After a moment of collecting himself, Kol turned back to Klaus, eyes seemingly now focused on a new topic as he zeroed in on his elder brother.

Unfortunately, he didn't have enough time to recognize the accusing look on Kol's features before he asked the question.

"What happened with Caroline?"

It took a moment for Klaus to understand exactly what the question meant, as amongst all the 'drama' with Damon, Bonnie and his brother, he had forgotten his troubles. But it was okay, he remembered just as quickly as he forgot. "It doesn't matter," he muttered acridly, dropping the plastic cup of now lukewarm water in the bin.

"Listen Nik," Klaus looked up at his brother, whose lips were tightly pursed, hands gripping his hips, and eyes now almost _angry_. "I know this may be hard coming from someone who's got a track record like me, however it has to be said."

And once again before he could even object to what ever in God's name was coming out of Kol's mouth, he continued on.

"I know you're used to having severely screwed up relationships with everyone around you, especially the women in your life. But surprisingly enough I actually think you _may_ have a chance with Caroline, someone who seems to _actually_ care about you, and isn't certifiably insane or related to you, okay? So perhaps don't fuck it up."

Klaus was taken aback. He attempted as he could to try and absorb all the information, but only a beat passed before, "I didn't know you cared, little brother." He also didn't know Kol was so observant, but he wasn't about to say that to his face.

He just shrugged, looking off to the side. "Less that I care, and more that I'm sick of your constant brooding, and the back and forth between you and Caroline. It's exhausting and detestable. But who knows? Perhaps I'll hate you happy even more."

Kol shook his head, and swiveled on the ball of his foot, making towards the sliding doors the led to the back gardens.

"It's not like I've ever seen it before."

The statement dismayed Klaus more than he would've liked to admit, primarily because of the truth he knew was behind it. He had never truly been happy. In fact, he didn't think any one in his family ever had been either. Not Freya who had been kidnapped by their aunt when only a baby and returned a decade later. Not Finn who had forever been hindered by his starch honor and morality and pathological shame. Not Elijah who dragged himself down to try and push his siblings up. Not Kol who never thought he was good enough for anyone. Not Rebekah who tried too hard to be good enough for and better than everyone. Not Henrik who died before his time. Not even his parents, who Klaus didn't think had ever even loved each other.

Maybe that was what was wrong. It wasn't Caroline's response that he found dissatisfactory, it was the feeling of finally being happy. If he accepted it, that meant happiness, and then what? Once things reached the peak the only place to go was down.

Perhaps the Mikaelsons were cursed to never be happy.

Or perhaps that was just the Mikaelson way.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Elena's mouth was as dry as cotton and her bones a stiff board. All she wanted to do was stretch out and crack every joint in her body, grab the glass on the table nearby, and drink what would taste to her like sweet nectar but in reality was just water. She couldn't, of course, because her arms were restrained in leather straps effectively tying her arms to her sides. This was because she was on, as the nurse earlier had told her, "suicide watch". The reason she was on suicide watch was because she had supposedly tried to kill herself. It was 'supposed' to Elena because she couldn't actually remember doing it.

She never did.

She had woken up to the same scene she did every time, Alaric and Jeremy sitting in armchairs to one side of her, looking completely wrecked. A lump immediately formed in her throat (as usual) and she moved to sit up but couldn't, of course, so instead staying lying there, stupidly looking between the two people she loved the most in the world. Alaric placed his hand gently over hers prompting tears to prick her eyes and Jeremy just watched, all going as usual. Although, the other times she hadn't been in hospital unable to sit up but instead in her bed at home, it was the same visual nonetheless.

Her mouth opened the croak out an "I'm so sorry" yet nothing came out. Rick brought the glass to her mouth. She gulped it down. Then, began crying and blubbering out apologies as Rick stroked her hair and Jeremy watched. Elena didn't really need to bother explaining herself because they knew why what had happened happened, although they hadn't expected it to ever happen again since admitting her to the Augustine Center, they thought she was safe, that it _couldn't_ happen again. They were wrong.

"I had been doing so well, better than I've ever been before-"

"-Elena, I understand-"

"-No you don't, Rick," her voice cracked and he used a tissue to wipe away at the tears tread marks on her cheeks and the snot at her nostrils, "I had never been as good as I have been here. And I just thought, maybe if I stopped… I'd _still_ _be_ good, and that it was the place not the medication…"

"It was a mixture." Alaric supplied, giving her a small smile, however she saw the muscles in his jaw tick and the flicker in his eyes, the agony. He didn't deserve what she put him through, she knew. "Now you know. And you won't do it again."

She gave a small nod of her head. Yet she still frowned, her heart heavy. "I hate having my sanity controlled by pills." It was a sliver of a whisper, but heard nonetheless.

Rick swallowed and let out a long breath through his nose, causing Elena to suddenly become acutely aware of the tubes going up her own nostrils, providing her with oxygen. "You have a chemical imbalance in your brain," he began, tightening his grip on her hand to grab her attention, " _millions_ of people do. And it's not your fault, and it's not their fault. Taking the medication isn't a _bad_ thing; it helps you survive life, just like drinking water and eating food does. There's nothing wrong with it, Elena, you need to understand that."

She did, she just forgot sometimes.

Alaric left the room to grab a cup of coffee and some pudding for Elena from the cafeteria, and so leaving her alone with her brother. And there was a silence, one that was awkward, potently so, making even the oxygen in her lungs feel stale and stagnant. Her skin prickled as he checked the watch on his wrist. Then, he made the mistake of chancing a quick glance at her, only to find she was already watching him, making their eyes meet.

"Jeremy-"

"-Don't."

A pause; he tore his cold eyes away and to out the window, some ugly vista of a semi-empty parking lot, and her heart was quickening, so much so she was shocked he couldn't clearly hear it. "I can't _help it_ , Jer." She started, but his expression showed no indication that he heard her, even though she knew he did. "You heard Rick, I have a chemical imbalance in my brain, okay? I'm sorry-"

"-You're always _sorry,_ Elena." He toned back, swinging his head to look to her, his upper lip curled back in a look of distaste and spite. Her brother let out a breath at her shocked silence, because he normally just ignored her, _usually_ , and he shook his head with a bitterly weak grin. "Sorry is all we hear, if you're not going through manic episodes of going missing for days, or depressive cycles where you try to kill yourself, you're always sorry but you never show it, Elena, _never_ do anything about it."

There was a sharpness that cut through her heart, and her stomach jumped to her throat, making the next words that escaped her mouth come out thick and muddled. "I can't help it, I don't mean to hurt you."

"But you do! Elena, you do!" He rose up like his voice, the chair clattering to the floor behind him. It wasn't clear, his face, because tears blurred her vision, but she didn't think she had ever seen him so _angry_. "You hurt everyone you love! You hurt Alaric so much he became an alcoholic to cope with the shit you put him through. You hurt me so much growing up that I'm as fucked up today as you know I am. And Aunt Jenna? _Well_ , she didn't live long enough for you to hurt her substantially but I don't doubt you would've."

The pure, unadulterated spite in his voice, in his words, made her gasp. She couldn't move her hands to block her ears, she couldn't stand to run away, all she could do was lie there and take it.

"Mom and Dad-"

"-Jeremy, please…" She begged, knowing she wouldn't be able to bear the next words that left his mouth.

"You hurt them so much that it _killed_ them."

All breath escaped her. She knew it was coming. It still hurt like hell.

"If they hadn't been driving that car after picking you up from one of your little stints, they would be here _right now_ , and you know it, Elena." He wasn't yelling anymore, although she wasn't too sure if that helped or made it worse. And she was crying but so was he. "They are dead because of you." Jeremy's jaw wobbled like his words. "I _don't_ have a Mom and Dad because of _you_."

"Jeremy-" Her voice broke off. She was limp, _exhausted_ from just lying there, she could hardly speak the next words but _had_ to. "If you hate me so much, why are you here?"

It was the first time he looked her in the eyes since the glance that started all of it, and she almost couldn't believe it when a laugh escaped his lips, but she could. And he shook his head, his hands on his hips, face bowed, voice low. "You know I don't hate you Elena."

"I don't."

He looked up. "I don't hate you Elena. I could never hate you. But I don't know if I can forgive you."

She gripped the sheets beneath her in fists, wanting to fight the wobble she knew would be in her voice. "I love you more than you could ever know, Jer."

Jeremy's nostrils flared, but more tears escaped his eyes, ones that he didn't even bother wiping away, and he finally crumbled up in front of her, collapsing into the chair he had been in when it all began. And he sobbed into his palms. Great, wracking cries, which were silent but heaved through his body. Unable to do anything, Elena looked at her brother, her big little brother, who despite growing so much was still the same scared thirteen-year-old inside that he had been when their parents died. She hadn't been there for him when she should've, and while it was because she was suffering immensely, she had forgotten that Jeremy was too, just in a different way to her.

"Oh, Jeremy," her voice had been thick with tears, and she hated herself for it because she had already had her times to cry. "Please, I'm so sorry. I'm just so fucking _sorry_."

He looked up, his face blotchy and red and wet and _so_ like the kid she had had to comfort oh so long ago when he had stubbed his toe on the corner of the table or scraped his knee playing at the park. "You can't help it." He responded, raw and hoarse. "It's just who you are."

That had been two days ago.

After that, she Alaric had come back, somehow coffee and pudding-less, not really upsetting Elena too much as she had long lost her appetite. Later on in the day, she had been administered a psychological evaluation to see what ward she would be placed back into. The next day, she learnt she had been cleared ("albeit warily", as the nurse had said) to return to ward A, but had to stay in the medical wing for another couple of days to make sure that her body had once again gotten used to her prescribed medication, as after not taking it for weeks it would have some initial side effects once she started it up again. However she was now allowed visitors.

"Your hair's looking a bit dull." Bonnie commented casually, leaning back in the armchair as she regarded Elena, causing the latter to scowl at her, because as if she didn't already _know_.

Damon waved his hand about. "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure Stefan can give you something for that."

Bonnie rolled her eyes and let out a scoff, crossing her arms and turning to look at him through narrowed eyes, "what _is_ it with you and your brother's hair?" And when actually thinking about it, Elena nodded as well, because she, too, had noticed Damon's strange… feelings, about Stefan's hair.

Damon briefly looked between them accusingly, before schooling his expression into one that was cool, with his lips pursed. "I have no idea what you're talking about." He paused, then running his hand through his own hair with a smirk. " _Why_ would I be obsessed with Stefan's mere mousy mop when I've got a mane like this?"

Both of the women in the room groaned, but it was Elena who gave him a backhanded slap on the shoulder. He didn't take too kindly to that.

" _Hey_! Don't think about getting too violent, otherwise we'll be forced to detain you in those straps again!"

His threat was empty, as the restrains had since been removed from her bed, and Damon didn't have the kind of power or trust in other nurses to get them brought back. Instead of heeding his ridiculous warning, Elena just snorted, and said, "you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

And like that, the furrowed brows, jeering lips, and pinched expression that was Damon Salvatore's irritation turned into a wolfish smirk, his cyan eyes twinkling. He leaned forward in his chair, gazing at Elena, a suggestive glint in his stare. " _Would I_? Well-"

"-Ew! Stop! No!" Bonnie screeched through his words, her face contorted into repulsion as she physically jerked away from the two of them. "No!" A pause, and she took in the blank looks of Elena and Damon, before another, softer, " _no_."

Neither of the two even had the decency to be embarrassed.

After a quick shudder, Bonnie crossed her arms tightly around herself, then raising her eyebrows pointedly as she turned to Elena. " _Anyway_ , that's not why we're here." She gritted out between her teeth.

"Not why _you're_ here." Damon muttered snidely.

"Whatever, Damon." Meeting Elena's confused gaze, she gave her a small smile. "Other than to see you and spend time with you, we- well, _I_ , wanted to see if you remember anything about the day when you tried to… uh…" Her voice trailed off, because she hadn't been in the room long enough to gauge Elena's comfortableness with discussing what she did.

"Kill myself." She supplied almost too easily, and Bonnie was thankful.

"Yes."

Then, her expression turned doubtful. "It's all a bit hazy…" Her eyes drifted away to stare at her blanket-covered feet, as she threaded her fingers together. "Bits and pieces come back to me when I'm not thinking about it, but they're scraps of irrelevant information. I remember swallowing down the pills all at once with a whole bottle of water. The water was spilling down my chest but I remember not caring because… I was going to be dead. It didn't matter if I was wet."

She felt Damon's large, warm hand rub up and down her arm gently, and she could feel their eyes on her, although she daren't meet them. Elena just stared in one spot, the starkness of the cotton, and willed memories of that day to resurface through her mind, but it was difficult.

"I hadn't eaten breakfast. I got past by swapping trays with… Kol, I think, and he didn't notice that his empty bowl was suddenly refilled. Everyone knows he eats like a horse. And…" They wouldn't come. The memories that she was trying to conjure up. It was as though they didn't even exist, because as she searched for them, all her mind saw was black. Nothingness. She shook her head. "Like I said, irrelevant stuff. I don't remember anything else. "

Elena didn't miss the crestfallen looks that slapped Bonnie and Damon on the face. It was odd.

"Why?" She asked, now skeptical, wondering why they even cared. It didn't matter anymore what she did on that day, just that she made it through. "Why do you want to know?"

Damon instantly turned to Bonnie, and it was as though he was seeking approval, which was even weirder because Damon most certainly _did not_ let anyone dictate what he said, and yet, there he was. Bonnie didn't spare him a glance, and instead was regarding Elena steadily, a thoughtfulness to her eyes. Then, she clicked her tongue, and shook her head. "We know someone visited you before you tried to kill yourself. We just don't know who."

There was a moment of silence. Elena frowned, let out a sound and " _what_?" It was genuine confusion in her voice, because she didn't fully comprehend what Bonnie was saying.

"A nurse said that some guy visited your room right before you tried to kill yourself, only it wasn't Damon, Stefan, Enzo, Kol, or Klaus. We've asked them all. It could be another patient, one we don't know, perhaps. But what reason would he have for visiting you? We don't know who it was. However, Damon and I think he may have… helped you."

What they were saying… It made no sense, because, well, helping her meant someone had tried to kill her and… "Bonnie, that's ridiculous." She blurted out, laughing a little, wondering if her friend was trying to play some shitty prank on her. "That- that doesn't make any sense."

"Elena," until he said her name, she hadn't noticed that Damon's hand was holding hers, and he squeezed it. She looked to him, almost frantic, desperate: unable to grasp what was being brought up, what was being suggested. "It's true, a nurse said so. She let him in because she thought he was me, but it wasn't me."

Her eyes widened. Elena felt as though she had been doused with icy cold water. She felt her heart beat begin to race in her chest. The darkness in her mind that was where her memories of that day were supposed to be became dread that enveloped her, that was pulling her down and down into a nothingness that she couldn't return from.

"Hey Elena! Look what I- Oh!" Caroline's squeaky voice cut through the silence in the room, and the tension between the three quickly dissolved as they all, simultaneously, put up happy fronts to hide what was going on from the blonde who had just walked in on them. She looked to Damon, who sat hunched in his chair, hand on Elena's tight, but what seemed to be a weird smile on his lips as he looked to Caroline. "Damon."

Furrowing his brows, he tilted his head to the side and widened his eyes. "Yes, Blondie?"

Caroline almost growled at the nickname, disturbing Damon as those kind of sounds weren't supposed to escape someone like her. The usual glare that her face was in when she was talking to Damon regained her features, and she walked to the end of Elena's bed. "Stefan was looking for you." She spat out, glowering at him.

He rolled his eyes, then turned back to Elena, kissing her hand, and jumping up. "He's probably just going to ask for some tips on how to style his hair, I'll be right back." He remarked, nodding to Bonnie and giving Caroline a gracious smile.

She ignored him, instead smiling almost manically at Elena and Bonnie as she held up some nail varnish bottles between her fingers. "Look what nurse Sophie let me borrow!" She squealed, almost shaking in her spot.

Elena and Bonnie smiled back, laughing enthusiastically, but they didn't forget the moment that had previously happened. Elena certainly couldn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. 'Tis me, the shit piece stuck to the bottom of your shoe from that one time you stepped in a dog turd on the street and couldn't get off. Fuck me, though, right? 
> 
> In all seriousness, though, what can I say? Sorry? Would that really remedy the wait for this chapter? I could justify myself by saying other authors have taken even longer unannounced breaks but I like to think I'm better than that even though I'm obviously not. As you very well know from this story, life's a bitch. Also I'm lazy. At least this time I'm not publishing a chapter without having zero plan of what the next one will be about. In fact, I have two plans which I need to decide between. I shouldn't and thus won't be making promises, though. However, please stick with me, I swear it'll be worth it.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone that has hung around with this story, you guys are the wind beneath my wings, and welcome to any newcomers. Subscribe and/or bookmark this story if you haven't already, like what you've seen and want to be alerted about future chapters, and please leave and review if you enjoyed the chapter and wanted to tell me your thoughts! It'd mean a lot. If you can't be bothered though (trust me, I of all people understand), kudos if you haven't already. X
> 
> **Next Chapter - Stefan relaxes in the recreation room, noticing Nora reunite with a blonde. The two women sit down on a sofa across from him, between Valerie and Enzo, and Stefan is somehow roped into a conversation about two people they all know, but the blonde knows particularly well.  
>  A group therapy session follows, where they not only do the usual stuff, but also get an update from Matt on some other patients.  
> We see more behind the relationship between Kol and Bonnie.  
> (This is a rough idea, some details may change)**


	12. Bittersweet Symphony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on One Person's Craziness Is Another Person's Reality...**
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> Kai acts oddly towards Rebekah during a painting class as he brings up Elena's attempt on her own life. Rebekah finds herself more effected by Elena's suicide attempt than she would've thought. Stefan joins her in her room, and they relax for one sweet moment, until Hayley comes in, telling them that she believes Katherine had something to do with what happened to Elena, confusing Rebekah about what her motives are, as Hayley refuses to do anything with the information. Rebekah doesn't know what to do.
> 
> Klaus apologizes to Caroline for ignoring her for some time, and then after returning to their normal dynamic, refusing to tell her why. Caroline easily accepts his apology, but something feels off to Klaus, yet he can't figure out what. Klaus then approaches Kol who is chatting with Bonnie, only for Damon to come along and reveal that Bonnie was 'working' Kol to try and get information. Kol is hurt but tries to cover it up, then turning on his brother and telling him not to screw up what he has with Caroline. This leaves Klaus wondering whether he even wants to be happy with her.
> 
> Elena wakes up to find Alaric and Jeremy with her, a reoccurring sight. She immediately apologizes to them, but Alaric forgives her, telling her it's not her fault. When Rick leaves, however, Jeremy proves to be less forgiving. He snaps, blaming her for the immense damage caused to him and other's around her due to her repeated cycles of recovery and relapse. He then leaves, and Elena has never felt so guilty before. Days later, Bonnie and Damon visit her. After some beating around the bush, they reveal to her that they think someone may have had something to do with her suicide, and maybe even influenced it. Elena is disturbed, but can hardly dispute it as she doesn't have any memory of the hours before her suicide attempt.

' _I'm worried about what Damon and Bonnie are doing. They've spent the past few days scheming about what they will do now that they've finally zeroed in on Kai as a suspect. Nothing good can come of this. Elena still hasn't been released from the medical ward and they're refusing to listen to reason. They've made me promise not to go to Matt because they (in Damon's words) believe he'll "lock me into Ward D, and throw away the key". I understand why they don't trust the people at the top of this place, but not their wariness of Matt. And what's even worse is that Rebekah is still unsure as of whether she will go to Matt and tell him what Hayley told her. I'm afraid I will be forced into doing what is right, even if it is against what I told Rebekah I would do. Everyone has been acting paranoid, as mistrust and accusations, albeit not voiced, have turned towards the institution, and then Kai, and now Matt, I'm concerned about how long it will take for us to turn against one-'_

"Nora!"

Stefan looked up from the journal he was writing in, watching as Nora launched herself into an unfamiliar blonde's arms. Tears dampened both of their faces, and their smiles were so wide that if it weren't for how obviously genuine they were, they almost seemed strained. Nora tangled her fingers in the blonde's hair, nuzzling her nose into the nape of her neck.

"My love…"

"Don't _ever_ ," Nora grunted through gritted teeth, pulling back as she cradled the blonde's face between her palms, eyes intensely green, " _ever, ever_ leave me again, Mary Louise. _Never_."

 _Mary Louise_. It all made sense to Stefan suddenly, as he remembered Nora speaking of the woman she had loved and lost to Ward D. He looked down to his scrawl across the pages before him, and suddenly everyone's paranoia was beginning to make more sense to him. Running his fingers over the dented words, he quickly slammed the notebook shut, clenching his jaw as he felt something tighten in his chest because _what had he gotten himself into checking himself in here?_

"I don't think I can ever let you out of my sight again."

" _Please_ , get a room."

Jerking his stare up from the weathered leather cover, Stefan saw as Valerie and Enzo sat sprawled across the sofa nearby. Valerie was watching with distaste in her eyes and her lips surly, while Enzo didn't seem to care, his stare distant. But the former's heckling did nothing to discourage the couple, Stefan noticed almost happily, as they continued on muttering sweet nothings into one another's ear and dotting kisses all over skin when they weren't speaking.

Valerie groaned, picking up a cushion and pulling her hand back to toss it at the canoodling couple, but Enzo quickly snatched it away from her. Accusingly, she twisted around to him, yet one moment of eye contact, one shake of the head, and Valerie seemed to calm. Stefan wondered what it was that was up between the two, because there must've been _something_ if he could manage to reign in her rage so easily.

The couch sagged beside him. "Hey, Stefan," Katherine greeted, a soft smile on her lips as she stretched one arm across the back of the couch, not quite touching him, but close enough for it to feel intimate, at least to him. She leaned forward, her eyes flitting down to his lap, her tongue flicking out to wet her lips. "What are you up to?"

"Um," he started, trying to subtly shift in his seat so her face wasn't so close to his that he could feel her breath feather on his features. "Just writing in my journal."

" _Oh_." She exhaled, gently running a finger over the cover, locking eyes with his. There was something in them that Stefan couldn't quite decipher, a calculation to them, yet also _more_. He felt uncomfortable under her gaze, so close to her he could feel her warmth radiating, sense her chest rise and fall with each breath she took. "What about?"

He didn't trust her. Even before Hayley had said what she said, he didn't trust her. There was just something so vehemently untrustworthy about Katherine Pierce, from the way she would just blatantly watch him, or the sly grins she'd give him, or the way she seemed to take every opportunity she could to touch him. Sure, Stefan could've just attributed her coming on so strongly to him upon her disorder, but she wasn't like that with the others, not with Damon or Klaus or Kol or Enzo or _anyone else_. Just Stefan. And he knew there was more to it. There was something blanketed under how she treated him, because it just wasn't normal. There _had_ to be more to it.

She was asking him about his journal; the one Matt had assigned to him to write in about his thoughts and feelings and dreams when and if he slept. It was supposedly meant to be therapeutic. Stefan wasn't so sure. But that was irrelevant. Katherine was asking him about it. There must've been a reason. He didn't know what, however he had to stay guarded.

"My nightmares."

Katherine clicked her tongue, before saying, "only nightmares? No dreams?"

And Stefan shook his head. "Not in this moment, no. Only nightmares."

She was quiet. He saw something tick in her jaw. Her eyes had changed from glimmering and cunning to hard and impenetrable. She looped a curl around her finger, opened her mouth and ran her tongue over the bottoms of her teeth.

He just regarded her, silent; the weight of her hand still on his journal, and then she snatched it back up.

"Well," she began, seemingly having made her mind up about how to respond, a small smile, or smirk, he couldn't quite tell, pulled at her lips, "nightmares can be a _good_ thing, Stefan. They allow us to turn our fears into memories of the night before."

Stefan stared at her, now, feeling something stir in his stomach because, other than the fact that he knew what he knew about her from Hayley (and _boy_ , was that not good), there was something just overwhelmingly _not right_ about Katherine. Maybe it was the fact that she had maybe tried to help Elena kill herself, but it felt like something else. And the feeling intensified when she lifted her hand to his cheek, gently cupping it, and running her thumb across his cheekbone, before standing, and leaving. He watched after her, ill, as she disappeared through the doors.

His eyes fell to the journal that still sat in his lap, and he placed his hand over where she had touched it, and it was as though the leather burned the palm of his hand as he jerked it away immediately. Rather than being his safe space, it was now sullied because of Katherine, tarnished because he now thought of it as the place where all his nightmares went.

Stefan tossed it on the table in front of him, and held his throbbing head in his hands.

 _Elena, Damon, Katherine, Rebekah, Hayley, Bonnie, Matt._ Apparently, everyone lied, everyone hurt themselves, everyone hurt everyone, no one could trust anyone, honesty was not the best policy, cards had to be kept close to your chest, death was on all of their doorsteps, waiting for you to answer and let them in. More and more weights were tossed upon his shoulders, and his feet were blistered, joints aching, heart charred, and lungs whiplashed. There was no stopping; he just had to go on and on until he finally collapsed. There was no release, not even in his sleep, if he ever fell into it.

"You know that woman is the human embodiment of the devil, right?"

Gritting his teeth, Stefan lifted his hung heavy head to look up at yet another person who had decided to give him their input on another aspect of his life. And this time, it was a newcomer, Mary Louise, with Nora on the side.

"The _actual_ devil."

Mary-Louise's almond azure eyes bore into his own, almost frantically, and he wasn't sure if he should hear her out, or run. "What makes you say that?" he questioned, deciding upon the former, as he watched Nora's hand curl around her girlfriend's elbow and pull her back to give Stefan some more breathing space.

"Have you _met_ her?" Mary-Louise yelped, her voice coming out strained and she attempted to keep her voice down. "Because I think that's all that is necessary to agree with my statement."

Stefan hesitated. He didn't like Katherine, he didn't trust her as far as he could throw her, and she had supposedly done something that could've enabled Elena to end her life, but he liked to think that in every one there was a piece of humanity, even if just a sliver, that made them redeemable. And he didn't agree with labeling people the devil because no one could be one hundred percent evil. So, he shrugged, and said, "sure, she's made mistakes and has issues, but haven't we all, and don't we all? She may have an abrasive personality-"

"- _Abrasive personality_?" the blonde shot back incredulously, deciding to sit on the edge of the couch beside him, her leg shaking furiously and her fingers tapping her knees feverishly. "She was in my therapy group, Dr. Fell, and she introduced herself to us when we arrived as 'a master manipulator, disregarder of social norms, and dominant in deception with a sprinkling of a complete lack of remorse'."

"And," Nora spoke up, softer, gently laying a hand on her girlfriend's shoulder, her green eyes earnest, "Katherine hasn't shown either Mary-Lou nor I that she isn't any of those things."

Stefan was taken aback. And he didn't know why. Nothing he knew of Katherine could dispute those facts.

And yet he was shocked.

Or maybe it was fear.

"You should stay away from her," Mary-Louise warned, leaning in and lowering her voice to a cutting whisper, and Stefan was startled to see her eyes turn glassy and purely petrified, "she's one of the longest-staying patients here, and I think she's at her wits end. I was in Ward D with her for _weeks_. She was my roommate. And let me tell you first hand that she can't be trusted."

Nora crouched down, leaning on Mary-Louise's legs, and looked up at Stefan with matching fear in her eyes. "I take it by now that you're suitably horrified by what you've heard. But you have to believe us. You seem like a decent person, Stefan," Nora let out a bitter breath and shook her head, "more so than most of the people here. But troubling yourself with Katherine will only bring you pain."

He opened his mouth. And then closed it, sucking air in through his nostrils to steady himself. "I can't not believe what you're saying because I have nothing to defend her with." In fact, he had the exact opposite kind of information, but he couldn't tell them _that_.

"And _Kai_."

Ice ran through his veins. "What?"

" _Kai_ ," Mary-Louise pressed, the horror deepening in her eyes in a way that Stefan didn't think possible, "You can't trust him, either. He and Katherine… They're just- They're- You can't-"

"-They're like two peas in a pod." Nora finished where her girlfriend couldn't. "Both of them are highly unpredictable, and worse yet, _bored_. First, Elena, who next?"

Stefan stilled, a thick, muscled knot looped itself in his throat, his mouth stark dry, all joints in his body completely locked. "You," he struggled to get the words out as his lungs were burning, " you both know- both think-"

"-We're not dumb, Stefan." Nora pressed her lips into a thin line, and her face-hardened, as she laced her fingers through Mary-Louise's and slowly shook her head. Her eyes were wide yet anything but innocent, vehement as she said the next words, "You're not either. Believe us when we say you can't trust _anyone_. And maybe, not even us."

And Nora stood. And Mary-Louise stood. And they twisted around and walked away with those last words hanging heavy in the air. Stefan watching in awe as they left the room, hand in hand, a spring almost in their step; his stomach lurched because nothing felt real and everything felt like a game.

He had no idea what his life was anymore.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Lying on his bed, Kol stared at the ceiling, scrunching the polyester covers in his fists. Through his mind flickered a series of images of places that he had lived in. The faint image of his first home in the Hamptons, his room at his boarding school in England, his loft in LA, his room in the Anton Center, his room in Niklaus' place, his apartment he shared with Davina in Manhattan, and right back to his home in the Hamptons.

He thought of his mother, his father, and how much he loved them until they terrified him. He thought of their warm smiles, gentle touches and soft voices.

He thought of waiting areas and Nik's hospital rooms; Rebekah's tear stained cheeks, Elijah's shaking hands, Finn's achingly blank expressions. He thought of the bruised skin, bloody gashes, broken bones. He thought of the belt, of the room, of the things _they_ did to "keep them safe". He thought of being told how much he was loved but never quite being able to believe it because he didn't want to believe that was what love was.

Kol remembered forgetting all of those things when he got into drugs. Not having them weighing down on his shoulders anymore. Leaving it all behind, breaking away from their manacles, finally being free. Then they found him; _of course_ they found him, and that all dissipated like light from a dying fire.

He thought of his father's spit on his face, of his mother's turned back. The disdain in Finn's eyes, the disappointment in Elijah's, pity in Nik's, and never being allowed to see Rebekah. Freya still hadn't returned to them yet and Henrik was already long gone.

The nightmares, _oh_ , the nightmares that lanced his dreams; the black holes that hung over his head; the shackles that weighed down on his feet. Any energy, any happiness, any _life_ that may've sparked inside for but a moment was doused out by the damp darkness of not only his withdrawal from the drug that his body came to depend on, but also the shame. The shame of being the family disappointment, the shame of being weak, the shame of letting the drug seduce him, of being a coward, of getting caught, of having Mikaelson as his last name.

It wasn't the Anton Center that saved him, though; it was Davina.

She brought him back. She injected this euphoria into his life, this rhapsody, this bliss; this indulgent desire to _live_ despite everything he had seen, all that he had been through. She showed him that your past didn't have to dictate your future, that your life was your own to live and it'd be a waste not to do so to the fullest. She led him away from the shadow of self-loathing and disgrace into the sunlight that was the rest of his life.

The only problem was that it was scorching and there was no shade left.

Davina held his hand through the whole journey but it was only at the end when Kol realized it was circle and he ended right back where he started. He probably shouldn't have let his happiness depend upon one person, because the odds of failure, well, they were one to maybe seven billion, and _nothing_ was ever in his favor.

She said that they needed a "break", and that he needed to "properly work on some of his issues", and that she "didn't exist just to fix" him. All of it was true, but that didn't matter because the hole that her pulling back punctured in his heart made Kol cave in on himself. And he was always hurting because of her and always drunk because of her and she was _just fine_ and that wasn't okay so he _hurt_ her.

Kol didn't know what love was. Or at least, the only love he knew was pain. Leaving him was the first intelligent thing Davina had done since she had met him. He knew it and he hated it and he deserved it.

 _Shit_ _happened_ , and the last thing he remembered before ending up in the Augustine Center to be diagnosed and imprisoned was the look on his mother's face before his own smashed down into the half eaten drugged up steak on his plate. She didn't look bitter or furious or sorrowful or happy; Esther looked unremorseful.

And that was just so much worse.

"What are you thinking of, little brother?"

Klaus walked in, the tips of his fingers blackened with charcoal and a sketchbook tucked under his arm, a satisfied look on his features. Kol sat up, wiping the frown off his face and breathing out a laugh, feeling a stirring in his stomach at the thought of what his brother may have seen in his eyes. "I'm bored, Nik," he began, lamenting, letting a sigh roll from his lips, "I need entertainment. This place is as dull as anything."

"Tell me something I don't already know, Kol." Klaus muttered, tossing the pages on his bed and moving towards the shelves, riffling around in his crap. "Considering recreational drugs are off the table, perhaps you should go back to your second favorite hobby of staring at yourself."

Kol hummed, ignoring the slight as he always did. "You _do_ tempt me…"

Rather than responding, Klaus just let out a cross between a scoff and a grunt, then, finally finding what he was rather loudly looking for, he moved with purpose back across the room. Kol watched after his brother, aloofly looking for any hickeys on his skin a certain someone may have left (all was clear), but before Klaus could disappear through the door, he stilled. Bracing himself for him to turn around and make a snide comment, Kol deflated when instead of doing as expected, his brother stepped aside, giving him a quick look of delight, before saying, "do come in, Bonnie. I expect its Kol that you were seeking out?"

Feeling the slap of panic in his heart, Kol quickly fumbled for his copy of "Bossypants" from under his pillow and opened it up at a random page, running his stare over the first sentence that caught his eyes as his brother left and Bonnie entered; ' _You can't be that kid standing at the top of a waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute_.'

He waited, and waited, for her to say something, anything, ready to completely ignore her. Yet, Bonnie didn't say a word, rather, she moved across the room and sat down in the chair by the desk. And she was silent, not looking at him ignoring her like he wanted, but watching out the window as though there was something to be seen (there wasn't).

Kol read that same sentence over and over, feeling the tension curl tight in his chest, he felt ice run through his veins making his fingers stiff and tingly, he felt an ache right behind his eyes as a migraine set in. He didn't dare look up, yet he could sense her anxiety, feel how she tore are the skin of her nails, taste how her teeth were clamped down on her lower lip. Her breath went through his lungs and her heart beat with his. His ears rang; his mouth was dry, head pounding, eyes stinging, skin burning under the sensation that was her ignoring him.

And he wondered, he really did, why she even was _there_. Because for the love of himself Kol had no idea what she saw in him. Underneath it all, under the vanity and arrogance and charm, he was a loser. He wasn't intelligent, he had no aspirations, or job, he had never made his own money, his family hated him, he was a drug-addict, he abused someone he loved, he could never stand on his own two feet, he was nothing by himself. She didn't know any of that, but it was plain to see.

Maybe she never had seen anything in him in the first place; maybe he had just imagined everything he thought she had felt. _Maybe he just shouldn't have cared_. And a tautness suddenly seized up in him, and he couldn't take it anymore.

He closed the book. Then he stood. Then he walked to the door. Then there was a hand on his wrist.

"No wait I-"

He stopped. Kol didn't know why, but then he did.

" _Kol_."

Kol hated the pain that punctured his chest when he looked down into her pleading green eyes; he hated it so much more than he had anything in a while. And so he smiled, let out a laugh, and ever so slightly put as much distance between them as possible. "Oh darling, I didn't quite see you there," he said, shaking his head as though in disbelief, "I was in my own little world. Tina has that effect on me, as you very well know."

She let out a sigh, dropped his hand, shook her head. "Don't be like this."

There was a pause that hung heavy between them while it lasted, and then, "Be like what?" he asked, and it came out quieter, softer than he had intended.

"Pretend like you're not hurt." When he didn't respond, and the silence was longer going than the previous, and he stared down at his feet blankly, she licked her lips, decided to put it all out there, "I'm sorry that I've used you before, but I just needed to know if you had been in her room. I was already ninety-nine percent sure that you hadn't, I just had to double check."

"Is that what you've been doing the whole time?"

It was her turn to be quiet, and his to continue on.

"' _Working'_ me?"

Bonnie shook her head.

"How am I supposed to believe you? When you've come up to me, asked me to do things, to say things, _for_ things, I've said yes every time. I've done everything you've wanted. How am I supposed to believe that that isn't all you're here for?"

A pause pulled at Bonnie's lips. And then- "I've _trusted_ you with a lot." She stepped forward, and Kol wasn't sure if it was earnestness in her eyes or something else. "If it was superficial, this… _this_ , then… Then I wouldn't trust you."

Kol was one tug away from letting her fall into his good graces again, because he liked that, the idea that she trusted him. He'd never really been given the opportunity to be trusted by someone, not his parents or siblings or friends or girlfriends. None of them had seemed to trust him. He never knew why, which was why taking Bonnie's trust for her word was so appealing.

But-

"But I don't even really know you."

He didn't.

What he knew, that she was from the next town over, had lived with her grandma, and had PTSD, was the base of Bonnie as a person and yet that was all he knew. He didn't know _why_ , why she lived with her grandma, why she had PTSD, why Kai had scared her so much that day, why _anything_ , especially why she had seemed to take a liking to him.

" _You_ don't get to say that," she said after a moment of recovery, her nostrils flaring, a spark of indignation in her eyes.

"Oh! I forgot," he shot back sharply, "I'm your considerate stone, not meant to talk back to you, just be, _do._ "

"My God, I don't even know _you_ , Kol!" her voice was almost shrill, her hands flailing around slightly as she tried to get a handle on the bursts of frustration that were escaping her. "You can't say, all worthier-than-thou, that you don't even know me, when I know next to nothing about you, other than the fact you've got a ton of siblings and-"

As she tried to conjure up anything else that she knew about him, the word hung in the silence between them, then slowly sinking as she remained cut off by her own lack of words.

Kol turned away. He seemed disturbed by it as well; shocked by how little he knew her, little she knew him, by how a nurse hadn't yet come in to see what the commotion was.

"Then why do you trust me?"

"Because you've been there when I needed you." Bonnie said, small, staring at his broad back and seeing his muscles tense through his shirt. "Even when I didn't know it. Like that first time, when Kai-" she swallowed, shoved down the unease at the pit of her stomach. "When Kai scared me, and you came and checked up on me, even though we'd hardly exchanged two words. You _cared_ , Kol."

After aching moments of his stony silence, Bonnie rose to her feet, moved forward tentatively, placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I haven't treated you the way you deserve, I know. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've made you feel this way, especially after how you've been so kind to me. I'm sorry that I've just taken and taken from you and never really given back. I'm sorry that-"

"-You shouldn't be."

He turned around, lips set in a hard frown and nostrils flaring.

"You shouldn't trust me, and you shouldn't be sorry. I'm not a good person, Bonnie, I've-"

"-I don't care, Kol. You don't seem to _get_ it." she cut him off, unable to stop herself from shaking her head, yet feeling a sting in her chest as his eyes widened in an attempt to stop tears from falling. "I don't _care_ about your past. Someone's past shouldn't define their future, especially in a place like this. You don't need to tell me anything you don't want me to know, just like I don't with you. And we're…"

Bonnie couldn't help it, she really couldn't, and she stepped forward, looped her arms around his waist and hugged him. He was taken off guard, tense, as though he didn't know how to respond. She didn't care.

"We're _all_ different people now than to who we were before we got in here. We're all getting better, changing. You're not your past, Kol. I'm not, Rebekah isn't, Enzo isn't, no one is-"

"-What about Kai?"

Her breath halted in her throat, and she leaned back into his arms that she hadn't realized were even there. Bonnie licked her lips. "He's different…"

" _How_?"

"He just… he's not _right_."

"We're all victims of our upbringing."

" _Why_ are you defending him?"

Kol sighed, Bonnie could feel his thumbs rubbing small circles on her skin, but it felt more anxious than an attempt to comfort her. "Because, Bonnie, I've done bad things in the past. Horrible things. Just like Kai. And yet, you can look past it with me but not him-"

"-But I always feel safe around you!" it came out without thought. "I never feel threatened or think you'll hurt me, but it's different with Kai. With him, I'm scared. I look at him and all I see- he's- everything is-" she couldn't push the words past her lips. It wasn't just because Kol didn't know about what had happened to her, but because Bonnie had never really wanted to admit how much Kai reminded her of her shooter. It wasn't that they looked alike, no, but their disposition was identical, the coldness to their stares yet the almost suffocating warmth in their superficial smile, the grace in their each and every movement, the depth behind every word. "I- He's just like-"

Although her shooter had only been in her life for a few minutes, she could never forget him and his every aspect. His likeness to Kai terrified her.

She gave up. Nothing coherent was coming out of her mouth, and it seemed that Kol understood what she was saying, or accepted it, or was just past caring. He didn't push for more. Bonnie profoundly appreciated it. Kol tightened his arms around her; Bonnie rested the side of her face to his chest, hearing the faint beat of his heart. He slightly rocked in his stance, rested his chin on top of her head, cradled her neck.

Kol realized life was complicated, and not all the same rules applied to the same people. He was tired of scavenging and fighting, so, _so_ tired; it was all he had ever known. When with Bonnie, _now_ , he didn't care if he was worthy or not, if he deserved her. He didn't care about himself, only her.

Bonnie realized that not only did she not feel threatened when with Kol, she felt _safe_.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Matt felt lead quickly form in his stomach when he entered the room and beheld the sight of his patients.

Most of them looked soulless and sallow, their faces fraught and blenched, eyes staring blankly ahead, they looked like a reenactment of Victorian post-mortem photos and Matt felt utterly ill. _He wasn't helping them like he was supposed to_. He had no idea what was happening, he just that wasn't _getting through_ to them. Each single session with them he felt them drift further and further away from his reach. He wasn't opening them up to him, coaxing them to trust and confide in him, rather, forcing them to curl up even more into their dark shells.

He was doing something wrong. Maybe it was because he lacked the experience to help them, maybe he was too overwhelmed, or maybe something else was going on. He didn't know. But he decided in that moment he was going to go right for the jugular, skip the nice, temperate and unassuming act because it _clearly_ wasn't working. He needed to do it with all of them together, because if one person had the courage to start, he hoped that others would follow.

Dr. Maxfield was on his back about them, and if he didn't crack them soon then his group would go into administration by someone else, with Matt being the second. While having someone guide him in treating his group was a comforting concept in comparison to how completely overwhelmed he was feeling, it also felt a little like failure. He didn't like that.

No, Matt needed to dig into the root cause of their problems, because for everyone, they always started at the same point.

"Okay," he said, taking his seat, flicking his eyes around the circle. "I want you guys to tell me about your parents."

Immediately, he could feel all tense up, their feelings withdraw deep into all of them, even Kai and Katherine, who normally were pretty open about what they felt. Matt didn't care. It wasn't like he could do anymore damage than he was already letting happen.

"I'll start."

The words left Matt's mouth before he even realized. But it _definitely_ caught all of their attention.

"I never knew my dad. He left before I was even born, gambling debts, I think. My mom was an alcoholic. She would disappear for weeks on end, leaving my older sister Vicky to take care of me, who soon followed in her footsteps once old enough… Although, even when she was around, my- my mom, she wasn't really _there_." Matt had to stop for a moment when he choked on his words, feeling tears prick his eyes when he thought of how every single member of his family had left him, alone and with nothing. Three people had chosen their addictions over him. "I was messed up by them, _my parents_ , for a while. I wondered why I wasn't good enough for them. But… then, after getting some help, I realized that it wasn't me who was wrong. It was _them_."

Matt looked around; in the eyes of his patients, he saw the varying shades of surprise, melancholy, pity, and worse yet, _indifference_ , to his words, to his story. He inhaled, shoving down the guilt that rose up his throat, whether from his misplaced shame over his past, or over his failing of his patients, Matt didn't know.

"They're what caused me to go down path that has led me here. I wanted to help others just like me, want them to see their true worth." Matt said, knowing that all that he had basically blurted out sure wasn't conventional, the therapist dishing out his own issues to his patients, showing them that he wasn't much different. And yet, it definitely seemed to be the push they needed, because-

"My mom left when I was young." Bonnie started, the kind of distant look in her eyes that people got when they talked about their complicated relationship with their parents. "I don't really have any concrete memories of her, they're all hazy, but I remember knowing she loved me. So I don't know why she left."

The corner of her mouth lifted up into a convoluted, bittersweet smile. A hard breath left her mouth, and then she sniffed, shaking her head, glancing around the room at all the silent, hard stares on her, lingering over Kai. Matt silently noted the way the emotion on her face shut up immediately as her eyes met his dark stare, Kai's lips in a frown that was different to any Matt had seen on his face before, more sullen than sarcastic or angry.

"After that, I lived with my Grams. My _dad_ …" Bonnie swallowed, and Matt felt an aching pang of sympathy when he saw her clutch her chest, because he knew what it meant. And her eyes drifted to his, and he met her stare, giving her a small nod, understanding, telling her that he didn't want to force her to relive her trauma in front of all those people.

He wasn't that cruel. He wouldn't do that to her. He knew she wasn't ready, yet. She understood.

"He lived in a different city, for his job. I never really saw him. He passed away when I was a teenager. It was after we had had an argument about how he never visited me, how much I hated it," she glanced down at her hands in her lap, freezing slightly when she felt Kol lean over from his chair beside her and hold her hand, then taking it, fiercely tight. "And he died, in- in a tragic incident. I was there, and I watched him die and I lived. Then, it was just me and my Grams from then on."

Matt gave Bonnie a small smile, praised her courage, thanked her for being brave enough to be the first to share. He looked around the circle, and he could just see it in everyone's eyes that they, too, had their own things to say about their parents.

There was a long, aching pause. Matt opened his mouth to try to entice someone to start, but he didn't need to.

"There's not really much for me to say," Hayley started, looking at Matt with a frank yet sour shine in her eyes. "I have no memories of my parents, they died when I was a baby and I was immediately sent into foster care, where I was never adopted."

He was going to say something, he was going to ask her about the adult figures in the places she grew up, he was going to ask he about what they were like.

However, he didn't, because he knew what they were like, he had read her file, seen the statements she had made to the police. Matt believed her, justice didn't care. Hayley had a daughter tossed right back to where she herself had started. He wasn't dumb enough to try and tear open any raw wounds, not yet, not when he couldn't try and push further, because he wasn't about to do that to Hayley in front of the others.

"Thank you Hayley. It means a lot that you're taking this first step in opening up."

She just stared at him, blankly, but jaw set and locked.

Then Stefan cleared his throat, leaned forward in his seat, looking to his older brother, who sat slumped, arms crossed, staring at the tiles beneath his feet. There was a moment, then another, and Stefan spoke; "our mother's name was Lillian, Lily, and I, uh, I think she was a good mother. She was kind and fair and I thought, _knew_ , that everything she had done for us was out of love-"

Damon scoffed loudly, drawing everyone's attention away from his younger brother and upon himself, but he said nothing. Instead, he just shook his head and pursed his lips, not raising his eyes from his stare-spot.

Stefan licked his lips, a look of concern in his eyes, before he continued on. "But then she got sick and our father sent her away. She died when I was ten and Damon thirteen. Our father, Giuseppe, was left to raise us, and he was, well, strict and stern-"

Another sound from Damon. Matt looked to him, lacing his fingers together, "is there anything you would like to add, Damon? They're your parents as well. I'd be interested in seeing them from your perspective."

His lips twitched and the muscles in his body visibly tensed up. Damon twisted his head so that he was staring at Matt, eyes angrily cold, as he asked, "what do you want to know, _Matty_?"

"What was your relationship like with your father?"

Damon's lips pursed, and the others present increasingly felt as though they were intruding upon something that wasn't there own business. He clenched his jaw, one hand winding tightly around his forearm, the other grasping at the material of his shirt. "He hated me."

For a moment, Matt didn't respond, waiting for Damon to continue on that thought track, but when it became clear he wasn't about to, he said, "okay. Can you elaborate on that a little more, please?"

His face became pinched, the lines around his mouth and on his forehead deepening. "He thought I was arrogant, selfish and lacked any direction in life, especially after I was dishonorably discharged from the military. Stefan was the studious and reliable golden boy who could never do anything wrong." Damon clicked his tongue, eyes turning cold and callous as he turned to look at his brother, whose stare was cast downwards at his hands folded in his lap. Matt could see guilt in it. "I could never compare to little Stefan in good old dads eyes, and he was probably right. And so he hated me.

"And _mom_ , well, she loved me and Stefan, shockingly, because apparently loving both of us simultaneously _is_ possible. I don't know if she would still love me," his mouth opened into almost a grimace, and Matt noted how Stefan's eyes became glassy while Damon's remained dry, "I've changed a lot since I was a kid. It doesn't matter, though, because she's dead, so I don't ever have to find out."

It was the first proper confirmation for Matt that Damon's narcissism came from some convoluted inferiority complex he had because his father never loved him like he loved Stefan. Matt had known for a while, it had been blatantly obvious by the way Damon could ramble on about Stefan; he had been waiting for Damon to really allude to it, and he _finally_ had.

It was Matt's first _real_ success. The floodgate was inching open.

"No one should ever define themselves by whether their parents love them or not," Matt responded, voice and gaze soft as his eyes flickered between the two who shared the same breathing space but were galaxies apart, "nor should anyone let their relationships be defined by it."

They were both as quiet as everyone around them.

"Thank you Damon, thank you Stefan."

Then came Caroline, who talked of her mother she loved more than herself and the father who senselessly left her after finally realizing that he was gay, of how she hadn't seen him since he had left, of how it made her feel like she wasn't worth him sticking around. But her eyes widened and hardened and she wrapped her fingers around her small wrist and said "but I'm making myself worth staying for, once and for all" with a strong sense of determination.

And Katherine, whose parents were hard-working first generation immigrants from Bulgaria, strictly Catholic and unforgiving for anything deemed a sin in the eyes of God, was shockingly brutally honest about her parents. Matt thought maybe mouthing off about them to anyone was catharsis for her, or something.

"I was pregnant, out of wedlock at fifteen let me remind you, and the shame almost killed them. They barely let me leave the house during the pregnancy lest someone catch sight of me and show my bloodline to be one consisting of lust and greed. I gave birth and my baby was taken away before even letting me hold them."

Everything was still in the room as the other patients stared point-blank at her, maybe in horror at the inhumanity of what she was recounting, or maybe in shock at how human she actually was. Matt already knew, but what he _didn't_ know if whether or not he was disturbed over how her eyes were so devoid of any emotion every time she talked about her past. Perhaps she was numb to it; perhaps there was another reason. He hadn't yet gotten to the bottom of it.

"I don't even know if they were a boy or a girl. It didn't matter, though, because I was tossed in here by my parents right after, never to be seen or heard from again, never to _embarrass_ them again. And, more importantly, never to see my baby."

Matt swallowed, not missing the critical glares in the eyes of Damon and Bonnie, and expression of being torn on Stefan's face, and something that Matt couldn't quite decipher in Hayley's gaze upon Katherine. "Thank you," he said, giving her a smile as she gave him a small shrug and guile smile in response.

Then Enzo, with his hollow stare and hollow words, the story falling from his lips, retelling of his raging alcoholic of a father, of his mother who dropped him off at school and never came back to pick him up, of how no one could find either of his parents and he, as a result, had to live in an orphanage on the other side of the country. Matt could tell that Enzo had told the story half a hundred times; the others just thought him traumatized. There was so much he wasn't saying; any one could've seen that.

But just as he had with the others, Matt didn't push for more than shared, because it was something more than he had heard from the man in previous sessions, and he could feel a thread of trust between them all being formed. He didn't want to stuff that up.

And then the Mikaelsons came, Kol with his hand still in Bonnie's and eyes downcast, Rebekah and Klaus both hunched over, mouths in tight frowns. It was a rare sight, shocking even, to see all three siblings who were usually proud and raucous to be so small. What was even rarer and shocking was for Kol to be the one to prompt the sharing.

"I don't have a close relationship with my parents. _At all_. We don't particularly get along, never have. Which, you know," he let out a bitter chuckle, shrugging his shoulders as though what was about to leave his mouth didn't bother him as much as it really did. "It isn't aided by the fact that as soon as I was of age to go to school, I was shipped off the boarding school in England and I-"

"- _Actually_ Kol," Rebekah cut in, now looking up at her brother with raised brows, "I think you're forgetting that we _all_ were sent off to boarding school, not just you. So we all suffered from the lack of time with mother and father."

Klaus coughed, catching their attention. "Now _you're_ forgetting details, Rebekah. We weren't all sent away. Elijah wasn't. He was too busy being groomed for the family business because Finn was 'too soft'. Neither was Freya, or Hen-"

"-Oh that's utter bullshit, Nik!" she exclaimed, now fully sitting up, ready as ever to argue with her brother as Matt and all watched on. "Freya was kidnapped by Dahlia as a baby and Henrik was shot dead before he could even fully talk." Matt jolted at the disturbing details, and the carelessness and and callousness in which Rebekah mentioned them. "They don't count."

"Well there's still 'Lijah." Kol conceded, and the others both nodded, and thus returned to their silence.

Matt cleared his throat, folded his hands in his lap and sat up, giving a sharp nod of his head before saying what he hoped wouldn't enflame either of the three, "but what are your actual relationships with your parents like? Okay, you didn't see them that often and so you weren't close, however what were they like when you all _were_ together?" He made his voice gentle but not patronizing, because he wanted to soothe them into talking further, not demean them into further reserve.

It was Rebekah who looked up this time, her eyes meeting Matt's, hesitant. She licked her lips and pushed her hair behind her ears, looking between her two brothers who stared down guiltily at the linoleum on the floor.

And she waited with Matt, who waited for all three of them to speak. While Matt, as per basic procedure, would normally wait a long time between questions, giving the patient long enough to decide whether they would answer the question or not (or making them feel uncomfortable enough with the silence that they said something to fill it), this silence was different than usual. It wasn't awkward, it was _painful_ , like the muscles in his body were all slowly coiling tight and his heart was stuck still in his chest.

Maybe it was because the three of them weren't saying anything, but it was probably because of _what_ the three of them weren't saying.

Then Rebekah spoke up.

"Fine then!" she said, her voice almost comically exasperated as she threw her hands in the air. "I'll start, and probably finish because you two have suddenly lost your voices and courage." Not even the hit to their pride could cause Klaus or Kol to look up. So she looked at Matt, so as to have something to redirect her thoughts towards as she began. "Our parents loved us, and we- well, I'm not sure what I can say for the others but, _I_ loved them. My favorite childhood memory is my mother, who was a chemist, one time allowing me when I was maybe three or four to help her make these crystals and whatnot for my father to sell. I always looked up to my mum because she was so strong and sturdy but also gentle and motherly. And my father was always passionate and protective. I always felt safe and loved with them… Until I didn't.

"I always say they really changed when Henrik died. Kol and Elijah normally agree with me but Finn claims that they were never the same after Freya was taken and they only deteriorated until Henrik's death when they snapped. Nik sides with Finn but I guess I don't really understand that because I always had such good memories of them but…" her voice was as watery as her eyes, which had moved away from Matt's to stare at her hands in her lap. "Maybe because I was so young I wasn't really subjected to it, maybe I blocked it out. The- the abuse. It's not like I ever had it bad; when I was back here I was normally locked on my floor half the time and ignored. Which got harder to do when I eventually moved back here as a freshman but still. I never got it as harshly as my brothers did. Especially Nik-"

"- _Rebekah_."

"It was mainly emotional, but sometimes, especially with my father, it got violent. They claimed they only did everything they did out of love," Rebekah continued on, ignoring the warning (or maybe it was a plea) from Klaus. Matt noticed Klaus' eyes were cast downward and how heat rose to his cheeks, and came to the disturbing realization that Klaus wasn't feeling angry or triggered about what Rebekah was saying, but he was _ashamed_. Kol, in comparison, stared straight ahead, eyes numb yet his face perfectly masked in indifference. Rebekah's eyes were gleaming, and it was apparent to Matt that it was for the first time when she was speaking that she wasn't exaggerating anything for attention. It almost made things worse. "I guess we all reacted to our upbringings in different ways. Finn clung onto mother like a blood sucking leech, which was exactly what she had wanted. Elijah became cold and apathetic. Nik did what he's done. Kol left. And I… Well, I forever remained the ignored child."

Matt's eyes moved between all three of them, and then to the others, to Stefan who stared at Rebekah in what looked to be shock, to Hayley who was focused on pushing back her cuticles, Katherine looked around at the Mikaelsons with something akin to amusement gleaming in her eyes. Bonnie rubbed her thumb gently over Kol's hand but studied the side of his face with tears pricking her eyes. Caroline's hand covered her wide open mouth, Damon's brows furrowed deeply as though all that he was hearing was some encrypted code that he had to decipher, Enzo stared at the clock above the door. And Kai, the only one left to share his relationship with his parents, was completely absorbed in fiddling with some object between his hands.

Just as he was about to try and move the conversation along, Klaus rose from his seat, and stormed off through the double doors before Matt could get a word in.

Rebekah quickly followed after him, her voice a cracking at she said "Nik I'm-" with the doors swinging shut on the rest of her sentence.

Normally, Matt would've either tried to get the two to come back, or he would've tried to move on, but neither seemed particularly appropriate courses of action after the draining session.

So, he sat there, trying to figure out whether this gathering had achieved its intended purpose or had done the opposite. The others remained in their seats for many long moments, as though they didn't want to shatter the calm and silence. But then came the question.

"Nurse Sophie told me that Tyler had been discharged from ward D by his mom two weeks ago." Hayley stated, her voice tart and sharp, her stare even worse when Matt lifted his head to meet it. "It this true?"

All eyes in the room, even Kai's, were on him. He felt a knot form in his throat, because although he didn't want to lie, he also didn't want to reveal the truth he had been withholding from all of them for so long because _why hadn't he already told them_? God, he couldn't even remember why, just knowing that every time he tried, he couldn't bring himself to form those words. Even now, he couldn't, and rather, simply nodded.

At this, so much to his dismay, Hayley's mouth pinched, and she jumped up and stalked off. And one by one, all trailed after her, avoiding Matt's eye contact, which he understood, which he deserved. And as he voiced after Kai, who was the last to leave, that he would have the opportunity next session to do what they hadn't had time for him to this session, he let out a burning breath he didn't know he had been holding.

It almost came as a relief knowing he'd failed them so badly that they would be going into administration. At least then he wouldn't be so in over his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I haven't updated since January. _Shit_. But you know what? I'm not even going to bother writing some awkward multiple paragraph long apology about taking so long to update. I've had a lot going on. My finals were a big time black hole. Then I found out that I was moving to another hemisphere and had a month to pack up, so that was a big pill to swallow. Then my holiday to Portugal (which is beautiful, by the way). I haven't had the time. I'm sorry, but I hope that this chapter can make up for it, and also the fact that I've already started writing the second one (in fact, I started before I finished this one, which was dumb).
> 
> Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoyed this chapter. I think it was definitely the least funny one so far (although this was humor turned darker, I've still been trying to sprinkle some comedy throughout the latter chapters). As usual, reviews would be great as I always appreciate hearing what people think about this chapter (whether good or bad). Subscribe/bookmark if you haven't already and want updates about new chapters. Thank you so much to all who are still around (although I do have a story that I intend to continue that has been on hiatus for even longer so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯) and thank you even more for reading! X
> 
>  
> 
> **Next Chapter - focused on Kai and his origins and psyche.**


	13. Shame

Kai remembered his first prison. It was his first bedroom, in fact. He remembered it being small and claustrophobic, six by seven feet (smaller than any prison cell), and windowless. Walls with yellow stained peeling paint, raw wood floorboards, one small lamp that washed the room in fluorescent, flickering light. A door that screeched as it swung, a narrow wire-framed bed, some drawers for his clothes, a desk, a stool. Long, rusted chains nailed to the wall, a padlock on one side of the door; the _wrong_ side of the door. When Kai was a little older, he remembered Joshua filling the hollow walls with concrete and replacing the old oak door with a shiny new metal one. He wasn't old enough to really understand what was being done. From then on, only he could really hear his screams.

His screams. Their reasoning was dependent on Joshua's mood, which, when it came to Kai, ranged from mad to angry to furious. Mad was sleeping in the chains, angry was a beating, and furious was the belt, and then later on, a real whip.

He almost lived a life completely removed from that of his siblings. His twin, Josette, was always on the receiving end of praise for her great grades and intelligence. Joseph affectionately called "Joey" by everyone, was already the star athlete. Leah was the most gorgeous of them all. Melanie was a young musical prodigy. Orion was the funniest kid alive. The wonder twins were going to change their future as a community. They all regularly attended community get-togethers; Kai was rarely allowed to come, and when he was, it was just to save face. He didn't like going anyway. It terrified him, seeing all these people who worshiped Joshua like a God.

His siblings did nothing. They had to have known what was happening to him, there was no possible way they couldn't. Maybe they were scared or maybe they just didn't care, but the latter was always a lot more plausible to Kai. They treated him coolly and with distance.

His mother did nothing. She was faded, worn, demented, hardly lucid, barely there half the time yet when she was she spent a hundred per cent of that time ignoring what was happening to him. She was almost always as angry with him as Joshua was. It wasn't a violent raging anger, but a cold and and distant fury that always festered beneath her skin but never truly showed. Kai may've had her looks but he didn't have her love. That had always been clear enough to him.

He was an outcast in his own home.

It was no better at school. It wasn't like he was mind numbingly dumb, or downright ugly, or pretentiously smart. It wasn't because he was the child of some weird cult (or as it was known, "commune") leader, because Josette had friends, Joey did, of course. Only _Kai_ had no friends. Maybe people could see the dark stain on his skin, smell the blood on his back, sense his warped spirit.

His home was his own personalized hell, school was just _hell_.

It didn't take long for the hate to strip him away, if he ever had anything good in him in the first place; according to Joshua, he was nothing but evil. His mother… He didn't really know what she thought of him. She never spoke to him, although the look in her eyes whenever she (rarely) laid them on him was enough to guess.

Kai's second prison came about after he almost disemboweled Joey. The screams that tore from the depth of his little brother's throat almost startled him because they were just so reminiscent of his own. Leah passed out when she came into Joey's room and found them. Jo was soon after, and she actually tried to stop him, but was stopped herself by him swiping his knife at her cheek.

She looked so _shocked_.

Joey's moaning didn't overpower the "but you're my twin" that left her lips as she touched the cut on her cheek. The one that would soon scar, the one that would remind her to never ever presume that just because they shared the womb together he had any obligation to her at all. _She_ certainly hadn't let any get in the way of completely ignoring all of Joshua's abuse.

As he continued on Joey, knuckle deep the gut of the brother who had the life that belonged to him, he began to wish he had started with Jo instead. He pushed the wonder twins to third in his list. Yet, it didn't matter, of course, because the police soon arrived, and Joey was in an ambulance, with Joshua and his mother by his side, and Kai in cuffs.

It was then Kai began to wish that he had started and ended the night with himself instead.

The Oregon newspapers reported that day as a family fight, one single stab wound in the little brother's stomach. Kai knew it was a lost worse than that, so did Leah and Jo and Joey, who lived the rest of his life with only one kidney, and the police officers who had searched his room and seen his writings. Joshua had done as much as he could to pay off the newspapers to report this, however, not wanting to tarnish the image of his "commune". It was just as he had with social services.

And so, Kai went to the psychiatric ward of Oregon State Penitentiary, after being charged as an adult at sixteen years old. He arrived and was stripped down to nothing, waiting, bored, as the guard regained composure after seeing the matted scars of his back. He was dressed in a deep forest green, supplied with shoes, and shoved into a room with some psychiatrist who attempted to diagnose what was wrong with him.

The results of Kai's four-hour chat with the doctor were not to be shared with him.

But he could, of course, guess all that he wanted.

He went to bed, in his second prison room, one in an actual prison, and one that was bigger than his first. He was there for six years. He almost thrived in the chaos that being surrounded by mutually insane people provided him with. A part of him never wanted his sentence to finish, never wanted to be shoved back into the world where he was nothing. Another part of him wanted to be released just so he could kill them all, once and for all. Anything after that didn't matter.

Not once during his sentence, did he ever get any visitors. It wasn't like he was expecting it; other than the fact that he had intended to kill them all, his family had always felt little to no affection for him. A part of him wondered why they didn't come, at least, to gain a little closure. And then he remembered; they were in the wrong, not him.

Everything that had happened was _their_ doing.

But they lived on. Josette went to medical school. Joey, unable to play contact sports anymore due to his single kidney, took up tennis, which he was far better at than football anyway. Leah won money and attention in her beauty pageants. Melanie got solos in her school choir. Orion became the most popular kid at school. The wonder twins grew and were _loved_.

Kai was in prison, rotting away, for all they knew.

He was finally released after six years, not knowing what the hell he would do, whether to go back and try and finish his botched job or not. Instead of those two options, rather than gaining the freedom the shedding of prison clothes gave him, he was flown off to another psychiatric institution on the other side of the country, sans uniform, however fundamentally the same in its functioning.

But the main difference was that in the Augustine Center, there was no foreseeable end to his sentence. His father wouldn't let that happen. No amount of good behavior could get him out earlier, which also meant that no amount of _bad_ behavior would get his sentence extended any longer than it already was.

All together, that meant he had free range to do whatever he wanted. And he didn't plan on letting anyone stop him. That was, until-

"Excuse me," the pretty nurse poked her head through the door after a couple of knocks, "there is-"

"-Do you like Chopin, Seline?" Kai asked from his bed, ignoring whatever it was she was saying as he swayed his finger along to piece that was emanating from the radio. It wasn't his, but the music therapist let him borrow it on the same day every week, obviously because he was her favorite.

She blinked in response, furrowing her brows and frowning, before answering with "sorry, what?"

"Who are your favorite composers?"

"Oh, I, uh, I don't really listen to-"

"What _do_ you listen to, then?" Kai shot up, his voice sharpening and eyes drilling into her, momentarily losing his composure. Yet, as quickly as it went (which was still enough to make her step back), he looked away, regaining his calm. Then, facing her once again only to find her eyes wide and telling of her alarm, he waved his hand, getting up to mute the radio. "Never mind. What was it you came here to tell me?"

Seline swallowed and licked her lips, seemingly taking her sweet time in telling him her reasons for interrupting his quality music time. "You have a visitor."

Kai stilled.

While for any other person, that news may not have come as a shock, seeing as it was the selected day that the center's doors were open for any patients' family or friends to visit, it was startling for Kai, considering he didn't have any friends, and his family hated him and he them. And it was now his turn to take long to respond, feeling heat rush to his face and his heart beat his head. His mouth turned cotton dry and his hands clammy, and he hated himself for turning so weak at the mere possibility that he had a visitor. Yet, then again, that's _what_ it was; a prospect, not a reality. Because he couldn't have had a visitor, he simply could not have. It wasn't possible. It wouldn't happen. It had to be a mistake, an error.

"You must have gotten the wrong person." he said, straightening out and taking a deep breath through his nostrils, feeling a weight lift off his shoulders at what he knew had to have been a slip-up, one that unsettled him more than he would've liked to admit. But it was fine because there was no one-

"No," Seline replied, shaking her head, looking down to the clipboard in front of her, "the visitor said your name, and you're the only Malachai here."

Slowly, he let out the burning breath from his lungs, clenching his fists and cracking his neck to the side, he eyed the nurse in front of him, trying as he could to reign in his ire. "What did the visitor look like?" he questioned, grinding his teeth together and counting to ten in his head because he _really didn't_ want to hurt the pretty nurse, but the urge was growing greater with every passing second.

She looked disconcerted at his reaction, her dark eyes watching him worriedly. "Well, she had light eyes, dark, shoulder length hair, pale…"

Kai frowned at the painfully generic description. Obviously, the visitor couldn't be one of his family members, but he didn't know anyone from his life before prison who matched that description. Could it have been another writer? Throughout the years after the attack he had been visited by authors who wanted to write exposés on him as a victim of being brought up in one of Oregon's largest quasi-religious cults. He, of course, refused. But that hadn't stopped them coming, so maybe someone had once again found him? It was plausible until-

"Oh, and she had a scar on her cheek."

"No."

Seline wavered for a moment. "Sorry?" she said as though she didn't hear him the first time.

"No," Kai shook his head to exaggerate his point because it must not have been obvious enough. "I won't see her. Tell her she can leave."

"I'm sorry Kai but you don't have a choice," she responded apologetically. "Matt sent me to come and get you. He said he thinks that this will be good for your treatment. You're going to have to-"

And he was in the hall, walking as Seline's calls echoed out after him but she knew where he was going. Kai could see other patients with their family and friends, could hear their chatter and laughter, taste their joy in the air, bitter on his tongue.

He was looking for her, half on a warpath, half achingly calm.

Kai walked into the recreational room, eyes roaming the space looking for her dark head of hair. He saw Stefan with a blonde that wasn't Rebekah, Enzo talking with the pretty boy head-doctor, Caroline with someone who had to be her mom, the Mikaelsons sitting across a sibling, Katherine talking with a terse Damon, Mary-Louise with Nora, a nurse and Valerie, Hayley alone, _faces_ , faces everywhere. Smiles and frowns, nodding, head shaking, brow raising, eyes rolling, deep breaths.

With his hands fisted by his sides, he stepped further into the room, feeling like a fucking fool because this _must've_ been a mistake. She couldn't have been there, _she couldn't_. If it wasn't a mistake it had to be a joke; a shitty, shitty joke that Kai shouldn't have fallen for.

He felt the skin on his back tingle, the scream clog his throat, the twitch in his eye.

It _had_ to have been Joshua. _It was the only explanation_. Joshua must've been bored, must've called up the clinic to make up the whole visitation, must've reverted back to his old tormenting ways when Kai still used to live with him.

"Kai?"

And Josette was there, as if from thin air, rising from her seat to meet him. She looked almost exactly the same, but for her hair being longer and the white line across her cheek that had been red the last time he'd seen it. Her eyes were wide, displaying every emotion she was feeling in that moment, just like they always did; it was her biggest weakness. She was tentative, his silent stare causing her to anxiously lace her fingers together before her as she stared at him, waiting.

He made a series of sudden changes; rolled back his shoulders, relaxed his hands, chilled his stare, widened his lips, and stood taller.

"Hello, Josette."

A lump rolled down her neck as she swallowed, flashing a quick and inappropriate, nervous smile. After a long moment, just as she opened her mouth to say something, he lifted his hand and gently traced his thumb over the scar on her cheek, making her freeze under his touch.

"You haven't changed a bit."

She was uncomfortable, of course, and he didn't miss the way she subtly leaned out of his hand. A slight grimace washed over her face, as she said, not sounding so sure, "Neither have, uh, you, Kai."

"I think I've grown a bit taller since the last time we were together," he shrugged, dropping his hand and gauging out her reaction, because they both very well knew that that was when he was being held to the ground and hand cuffed. Kai saw something flicker in her eyes, but it was gone before he could know what he was seeing and she pressed her lips into a thin line. With one last glance, he jerked his head to the adjacent table. "Let's sit, shall we?"

Jo nodded, seated herself where she had been waiting, and Kai across her. She watched him and he her, both letting the silence between them extend into what would probably be awkwardness for Jo but normalcy for Kai; he thrived in other people's discomfort.

"So how are the wonder twins?"

Like the rest of his family, she had never cared for him. Kai wasn't about to delude himself into thinking she was there because she wanted to see how he was. She must've had a motive, and hence something to say. What? Kai didn't really care. What he cared about most was showing her that she shouldn't have come there.

"Oh, what about our little starboy Joey? You know, I read in a newspaper a while ago that because of the loss of his kidney in a tragic accident he had to give up football, but the 'inspiring teen athlete' picked up tennis instead, which he of course excelled at, knowing Joey. Is he still at that? We don't get newspapers from Oregon here."

She stared at him. Kai didn't really blame her; he was a much different person now to whom she had known him as. He used to be _so quiet_ , slink in the shadows and stare down at his lap, mumble his words and flinch away from anyone's hand, cower in fear at the world and live a pathetic existence. Who he had been when he lived with his family was who he had to be to survive. His family had gotten a glimpse of what they had created during his last night with them; Jo was now meeting him properly for the first time.

"Does Orion still practice his stand-up-comedy in front of the mirror? What about those celebrity impersonations? Because I will admit that he used to do a great Owen Wilson- Uh, _wait_ , is Melanie still singing? _God_ she used to annoy the shit out of me with her constant voice exercises. Like, do-re-mi ears are bleeding! I was getting ready to cut out her voice box and stuff it-"

"-Mom died."

He paused, noting her thick voice and the welled up tears in her eyes. A second ticked by, Kai said, " _Shame_ " and then "in the morning does Leah still spend an hour in the-"

"-For fucks sake, _Kai_ ," she hissed, looking down at the table, holding one hand to her face as another tugged at her hair, the tears now freely streaming down her face as she let out a shaky breath from her weepy mouth, "I came all this way to tell you that our mom is _dead_ and all you care about is Leah's fucking morning routine and Joey's extracurricular activities. Your therapist Matt talked to me and said he thought you were improving but- but- _look_ at you."

Jo's eyes now met his as she wiped the muck from her cheeks.

"Don't you _care_?"

He couldn't help it, and he didn't really want to, as a laugh slipped between his lips and he threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know what you want me to say, Josette," he said, still laughing, shaking his head. "'Oh _man_ , I'm really upset that woman who hated me is dead', I mean, it's _absurd_ , you've got to admit."

Letting out a sharp breath as though in pain, her brows knitted together and eyes rife in incredulity. Kai, callous, watched as she stared off into the distance, confounded, lips mouthing silent words that didn't leave her throat, until five soft ones finally did; "That woman was your _mother_."

She jumped in her seat as his hand tightly wound around her wrist under the table, squeezing and squeezing until fear he was so well acquainted with began to leak into her eyes. Kai licked his lips, opened his mouth and squared his jaw, leaning forward so far that the edge of the table cut into his stomach and her face was but an inch from his.

The sounds of the room drained out around them and all Kai heard was the thump of blood in his ears. His features, his voice, were soft, achingly calm, almost serene; as different to what his mind was as black was to white.

"Don't you dare, Josette, ever call that woman my _mother_. She was not my mother. A mother wouldn't refuse to let her child talk to her, touch her, be in the same room alone as her. A mother wouldn't refuse to look at her child. A mother wouldn't stand by and allow her husband do the things Joshua did to me. _A mother wouldn't let her child become what I am_."

He could feel it now, her hateful stare, her foreboding silence, her callous attitude, her careful cruelty, her passive scorn. It all hailed down on him in one, massive onslaught. Even now, even dead, whether in heaven or hell or nothingness at all, she was still there with him not being there.

"I didn't have a mother, Josette. I just _don't_ know how you can't see that by now."

A tear fell across her cheek, so dainty and delicate that it made him want to puke. He let go of her and leaned back in his seat. Jo clutched her wrist to her chest, her lips in a small, solemn frown, her eyes on him, now not just looking, but _seeing_.

He didn't like it.

And then she whispered, "when did you become this?"

Kai felt so suddenly weary; it permeated his bones. He hung his head back, staring at the ceiling, and let out some semblance of a scoff. "Become like _what_?" he jeered back, not because he cared for her response, but just wanting it to end because _she still didn't fucking get it._

"You used to be so quiet and shy and- and…" her voice trailed off because she was lacking the adjectives to describe the hollow shell of a person that Kai had been. "And timid. You were never this _angry_ or violent."

He shut his eyes, blocking out the burning overhead lights, in an act of weakness that he rarely liked to display. He didn't know why he could hardly believe her holier-than-thou attitude, her self-righteousness, her ignorance. He would've been able to understand her rage at him, he wasn't completely emotionally stunted; he knew that what he did to Joey and her and what he had intended to do afterwards would make the average person angry. But what Kai just _couldn't get_ was her not being able to grasp _why_ he did what he did.

Sixteen years. For sixteen years of his life Kai was abused by Joshua. Sixteen years of abuse that were systematically ignored by his supposed mother, and then by Jo, and then by Joey, then by Leah, then by Melanie, then by Orion, and always by child services. Sixteen years of neglect, of scorn, of violence, of being shown time and time again that he had no worth. The only people who knew what was happening pretended it wasn't.

_They knew_. They had heard it and seen it. And while they may've pretended they didn't, they _knew_. _Jo_ knew.

And yet, she still didn't understand.

"I was always like this, Josette, you just weren't paying attention."

_And it was inexplicable_. It really was.

Because those words left his lips, and a moment passed, and another, and she was unwavering during those first two, and then something in her eyes flickered, like a light switch turned on and it was as though she was finally really _seeing him_. _Ever_.

Kai, fucking _startled_ , stared at her staring at him without disdain, without ignorance, without apathy, without _hate_. He didn't like it. He didn't like the way she was looking at him. He wanted to stand up from his chair and turn around and walk away and out the door and never see his sister again but he _couldn't_. He was stuck there, completely paralyzed.

Her mouth hung open, a breath caught in her chest that choked her up as tears pricked her gaze. Her saucer eyes seared through him, and he could see the images, whatever they were, flare before her sight, he could see her features flicker from something like shock into something he had never seen before. Kai didn't know how long she was like this, staring at him, looking into him. It could've been a couple of seconds, it could've been an hour; it felt like _eternity_ to him.

He felt as though he was back in that room, that dark, cold, room, with Joshua towering over him, his eyes boring into him as words that fell from his mouth with such ease cut and peeled back Kai's skin until he was nothing but raw, bloody bone. Kai felt like he was back on the floor as Joshua beat away every last bit of emotion from Kai until he felt nothing but superficial pain.

Kai could see the bruises blossom across his skin. Kai could smell the rotten floor boards that he laid his cheek across. Kai could hear the grunts that tore from Joshua's lips as he beat him. Kai could taste the salty tears on his lips. Kai could feel the familiar ache in his body as he used to drag himself to his bed, alone, so, so _fucking alone_. No one was there to bandage him up or give him ice packs for the pains, no one was there to sit beside him and softly stroke his hair until he fell asleep, no one was there to whisper in his ear that it was over now, that it was okay, that it'd get better, that he'd survive it, that they loved him.

_No one was there._

And maybe Jo was seeing it too. Maybe she was remembering all that she had refused to see.

Even so, she let out a breath. He couldn't hear it, he could barely hear anything, but he could see the weight press down on her chest. And another tear fell, and another, and she stared at him, and she shook her head as slow as his heart beat.

"I'm sorry."

He didn't think he heard her right but then-

"Kai, I'm sorry," Jo's voice was thick and her tears now freely flowing, her lower lip quivering. "I'm sorry we let dad do what he did to you, but- but we were _scared_ of him. We were so scared of him. I was- we had seen his mood swings, that way he'd just go from happy to angry like-" and she snapped her fingers, her voice now lowered to a trembling whisper and her back hunched forward so her face was close to his. "He never hit us or- or got violent. I wouldn't let that happen, not to Joey or Leah or Orion or Melanie or Liv or Luke. I _couldn't_ let him hurt them. And I thought if I tried to stop him from- from doing it to you he would-"

She broke off, now fully letting quiet sobs wrack her body, her face buried in her hands and hair curtaining around her head.

Kai watched.

He had imagined the situation a hundred, a thousand, a million, _endless_ times.

Though it had been different, then. All those times it had been him with a knife in one hand and Jo's throat in the other. All those times Jo had been remorseful, weak and dying and terrified and crying. All those times he had been bloodied and surrounded by bodies and in _control_ because that was all he had ever wanted in his life; control.

Kai had never had control over his life, most of all when he was growing up when his whole existence rested in the palm of Joshua's fist. It was almost ironic he had more control when he was in prison and the Augustine Center. But that night, that night he almost committed mass murder. _That_ was the first time in his life that Kai had had control over _everything_ , and _god_ it felt good.

And he wanted control over that moment, the moment that Jo would realize everything she did wrong, realize that she had everything he wanted and he had everything that was nothing, realize that what happened that night could've been prevented if she had had some _human decency_ to extend towards him throughout his whole sixteen years _._ He wanted to be in control of the moment he'd tell her that she could've helped him, could've saved him, could've loved him as a twin should, but she didn't, and who he was today was all her fault.

It wasn't Joshua's, because he was just who he had always been. It wasn't his mother's, because she was never really _there_ anyway. It wasn't any of his other siblings, because they did as they were shown. It was _Jo's_. She was his twin, his other half, and she was meant to be there. But she wasn't.

He hated them all; he blamed them all, but _her_ most of all.

He wanted control over the moment; he wanted to feel the blood rushing through his veins and the giddy jerking of his heart as he manipulated every word, every feeling, every moment.

But he didn't have it. She had taken that away as well, and left him lightheaded, indistinct, feeling so much at once yet so empty at the same time.

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. And this wasn't how he was supposed to _feel_.

"Kai."

Jo touched him and he jerked away, her cold, gentle hand searing his skin. He stared at her, eyes wide, impenetrable, nostrils flared, body still but chest heaving. She looked like a wreck, her skin pallid, cheeks wet with tear tracks and eyes swollen. Kai was repulsed by her emotion.

"You've done bad things," she said softly, hoarsely, fingers reaching to trace her scar, "you wanted to do worse. And I- for so long I didn't understand how you could do something so awful… Or I didn't want to. I was blinded by anger at how you could do such a thing, but, looking at you… now I can see so clearly for the first time in a while. And it was awful- so awful, _God,_ what happened- I…"

Her face grimaced in pain, and Kai didn't know if it was because of the memories coming back or because of how he was staring at her.

"It wasn't fair what you did to us. But it also wasn't fair what happened to you. What happened to you made you the way you are now and… It wasn't _fair_ , it still isn't, that this is what you have become…" a smile cracked across her face and she let out a weepy, terrible laugh. "I remember the boy you were before you became this…"

Kai did too.

He remembered that small kid he used to be, how innocent he had started off as. He remembered loving the feel of dewy grass beneath his feet, the sun kissing his face, watching and giggling at cartoons, stealing from the cookie jar and picking flowers from the garden.

But Kai also remembered Joshua hitting him when he found him outside. Kai remembered Joshua's screams when he found him in front of the TV. Kai remembered being locked in his room for whole days when Joshua saw the crumbs around his mouth. Kai remembered Joshua shoving dirt in his eyes and mouth when he found the withered flowers under his bed.

Kai remembered what he felt when these events happened. He remembered the tears that ran down his cheeks, he remembered the utter confusion the plagued his mind, he remembered the at first stinging pain in his chest that soon turned dull and aching and then into nothing at all.

Kai remembered the boy he used to be, dumb, ignorant. He didn't live very long, he couldn't afford to.

"Why'd he have to go, Kai?" she asked, her voice watery and heavy, maybe more to herself than him. It was then that he noticed the more heavily pronounced lines on her face, on her forehead, frowning around her mouth. She looked older than her twenty-two years. " _Why'd he have to go_?"

He didn't answer. She already knew.

Instead, _instead_ , Kai stood, Kai turned, Kai walked away, as though she didn't matter.

He was steadfast. He was cold. He was detached.

He couldn't listen to her anymore, he wouldn't. It didn't seem real, it didn't seem _right_. Maybe Jo felt the same, as she didn't say anything after him, she didn't try to stop him, she didn't do anything. He acted as though he didn't see her, didn't care about what she was saying. He acted as though it meant nothing to him, her sudden epiphany and water weak apologies and pathetic cries. He acted as though he _felt_ nothing.

He acted, and he felt it.

It wasn't enough.

But he didn't _know_ that, and, unbeknownst to Kai, there was a crack in his resolve, the resolve that told him he didn't need anyone else, that he didn't love anyone, that he didn't feel anything else but cold rage and bitter hatred. The resolve that told him that he didn't have to feel those _other_ feelings that tried so hard to be felt, that he was better off leaving what was behind him behind him. The resolve that told him it was better this way, that it was stupid to even try to get better because there was no point, that there was nothing there for him.

And yet, Jo's words had wedged themselves in enough to create a crack.

It was small, a hairline fracture. It was small enough that he didn't sense it; small enough that it only affected him deep down in the places he pretended didn't exist anymore.

However it was _still there_. And with enough pressure, he could break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I've finished that last little bit of this and updating it after I've had a bit to drink, so I'm sorry if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes but I just wanted to get it out! I hope that everyone enjoyed this chapter as much as I actually enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Please review if you liked the chapter, or have any criticisms, I'm open to anything! Kudos if you haven't yet and are liking to story. Subscribe for more. Why do I still say all of this? I don't know. Thank you for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> **Next Chapter - ??? I'll update this once I've sorted myself out.**


	14. Is Blood Thicker?

Four thirty. The crowd in the recreation room was thinning out. Like with most patients' family members, Grams had just left. It had been nice to see her again, despite being distracted from her presence. Yet the visit was difficult to get through, there was just so much Bonnie had wanted to tell her, but couldn't. Bonnie would trust her Grams with her own _life_ , but not with this. _No_ , she needed to deal with it herself.

She found him on the couch, surprisingly enough, watching a movie, though his eyes seemed glazed over. And Bonnie, so suddenly she almost got whiplash, decided she wasn't scared of him anymore.

"She's pretty."

His eyes cracked and flickered to her for a split second, barely that, and then back to the blaring, technicolor screen.

A smirk twisted at his lips.

"I don't dispute, but it's a bit vain to talk of yourself that way, don't you think, Bon?"

She rolled her eyes, seeing his cockiness at her actually seeking him out. Feeling distaste swirl at the pit of her stomach, she licked her lips, hardened her stance, squared her jaw. He either had absolutely no idea why she was there and so felt arrogant enough the make sarcastic comments and ignore her watching him, or he knew exactly why she was there and just didn't care.

Bonnie stepped forward, feeling a nasty smile make its way onto her face.

"I meant the _woman_ you were talking to today."

With a sick kind of glee that almost scared her, Bonnie watched as his face darkened. He didn't say anything, this time, but he still didn't look at her, trying for indifference.

"Who _was_ she, Kai? I know you've never had any visitors before."

Bonnie continued, and his silence was simmering, and she knew she was getting to him.

"A friend?"

She stepped forward idly, her eyes burning into the side of his face.

"Hm? Cousin?"

She stepped into his line of sight, forcing his stare up into her own. Kai licked his lips, ground his teeth, "my sister." he said, now fully glowering, not even trying to hide his utter contempt for her in the moment.

Bonnie rose her brows, nodded her head as though she was considering the response when in reality she had already been pretty sure who the dark haired woman was. And she didn't sit, didn't move, she enjoyed standing tall over him, feeling a rush of power through her veins. "That was a pretty bad scar on her cheek," Bonnie responded, casually enough, not taking her eyes away from Kai. " _Where_ did she happen to get that from?"

A bitter, mean grin twisted at his lips as he leaned back in his seat more, crossed his arms, and stared up at her. "I'll tell you if you tell me where you got yours from."

Dread dropped itself at the pit of her stomach and she felt the room around her sway. Bonnie looked at him with wide eyes, words piled up in her throat that she could hardly seem to get out, the only one managing to get past being a strained " _what_?"

"Oh I'm sorry," he said, his eyes guiltless and voice innocent, as his hand covered his mouth. "Was that supposed to be a secret?"

Bonnie steeled herself, reminded herself that he was a vacuous angry shell of a person, reminded herself that he meant nothing, reminded herself that she was better than him. He took her silence as approval to continue on talking (it wasn't).

"Well, anyways, it's not like you do a very good job at hiding it. I mean, you've obviously done as much as you could since the first day to avoid me but that doesn't mean I haven't been around, Bon Bon. I _notice things_ , I'm an perceptive person, I've had to be," he continued, licking his lips as his arms stretched out across the back of the sofa. "You know, some people have tics. Matt clears his throat _all the time_ , Stefan runs his hand through his hair, Caroline is constantly straightening up her clothes. _You_ …" he let out a laugh and lifts his right hand to his chest, fingering the shirt right above his heart. "You always touch right here, often under your shirt."

His eyes flickered right to her chest, then back to her eyes, and she noticed something weird in the way he looked at her.

"Now, a normal person might just think it's _ah_ you clutching your heart because you've been moved by whatever is happening or some sentimental garbage like that, but that's just bullshit. Maybe if it was Elena I'd believe it, but you're better than that. You almost always feel that bare skin there, so something tells me it's not your heartbeat you're seeking out to feel, no. I think it's as simple as you have a scar there."

If Bonnie wasn't so creeped out and repulsed by him she probably would've been impressed by his observation skills, but she wasn't.

"Where that scar came from? I don't know. Perhaps you've had open-heart surgery or something? But considering you've got PTSD I'd wager it has something to do with your traumatic event. Were you stabbed? Were you shot?"

He squared his jaw and grinned even wider, looking pleased with himself.

And he stared at her, and Bonnie at him, for a few very long moments. It was during those very long moments that something just _clicked_ in Bonnie, from darkness to light, and, well, she couldn't help the laugh that escaped her lips. And the minute he heard that laugh, Kai's face visibly _dropped_.

"You know, it's funny, Kai," she mused, slowly shaking her head down at him. "During our first 'encounter', you really triggered me. Because you reminded me of the the guy who murdered my father and shot me."

Kai stared up at her, his face completely unguarded and completely showing his shock at what she was saying, less because of the content of what she was speaking of, and more because of the fact that she was _actually_ saying it. Bonnie herself didn't really know why. Maybe it was because she was determined not to let him dangle her past over her head, or maybe because she just wanted to _shock_ him.

"I didn't really know what it was, whether it was the way you looked or the way spoke or the coldness to your eyes or just your disposition, but it reminded me of him. It reminded me of the guy who did this-"

And she pulled down her shirt to show him the scar that he had so raved on about, the hideous, raised patch of skin surrounded by the sprawling tattoo that streamed out from around it. His eyes flickered down to it for just a moment, and then back to her eyes. Kai still held himself in that lazily cocky position on the couch, but his body held none of the confidence, none of the bravado he had previously possessed.

"The guy who shot me left that small mark behind, which was nothing compared to what he did to my brain," she let go of the material, a sourly rueful smirk on her lips, "just like you did to your sister."

Kai blinked, his lips tightened, and he adjusted himself in his seat, now crossing his arms. Bonnie was surprised that someone as narcissistic as him hadn't yet interrupted her with some drivel. Perhaps Kai was, for the first time, speechless.

"But you're nothing like the guy who shot me. You _failed_."

Kai visibly flinched.

"And you're here, now, wrecking havoc, or at least, _trying_." Bonnie raised her brows, her upper lip curling up as she looked over him. "You failed at that too. Well, you did with Elena. I don't doubt you probably intend to try something like that again."

Kai was absolutely still, and Bonnie wondered why he was taking it, why he hadn't gotten up and stormed off already, or why he hadn't tried attacking her like he had tried the first day, because he could've easily overpowered her and there was no one else there. But he didn't leave, he didn't touch her, he just sat there, staring at her, and listening. It unnerved her more than anything else. She didn't let it stop her, though.

"I know your kind, _Kai_. You had a shitty childhood and so you think it gives you an excuse to hurt other people. Growing up in a cult must've been hard, I do concede, maybe your dad was harsh and overbearing. My dad was harsh and distant. It's _hard_ , but I don't try and use that as an excuse to be a piece of shit." she took a breath, reined in the images of raining plaster and splattered blood and dead weight. "Let me give you a piece of advice, Kai. Don't try whatever it is you have planned, because it will fail, I'll make _sure_ of that. "

And she quirked a brow, shrugged her shoulders, regarded him casually.

"Maybe you'll want to try, oh, I don't know, actually figuring out whatever is wrong in your head because-"

Kai _shot up_ to his feet faster than she could even comprehend, his jaw clenched and his nostrils flaring and his hands in fists and his eyes angry and… _something else_ , something that Bonnie couldn't quite pick out, but it was enough to make the next words catch in her throat as she stared up at him.

His chest slowly heaved and he was standing so close that she could feel his breath on her face and she felt something thrash yet tighten at the pit of her stomach. Any normal person would've ran like hell, knowing his violent history, but she didn't, maybe because she was stupid. But she didn't want to back down, didn't want to look like a coward, didn't want to hide like a scared little girl because she wasn't one anymore. It was fight or flight and for the first time in forever, she chose the former.

" _You_ don't know a _thing_ about me."

And he twisted around and stormed off after spitting those seven words, leaving her completely stunned.

Bonnie stood there for some moments that could've been seconds or could've been hours, trying to understand what had just happened. Because she expected him to snap at her with an insult and a snarled threat, or she expected him to laugh and act as if he had no idea what she was talking about, or she expected him to grab her by the throat and slam her against a wall because she _knew_ people like him, she knew who Kai was.

But she didn't expect that.

It was a simple statement, " _you don't know a thing about me_ ", yet there was just something in those words, much like the something in his eyes, that didn't sit well with her for whatever reason.

And even as Valerie came in and asked her where the hell Enzo was, even as she ate her food and took her medicine, even as she shrugged off those who asked her if she was okay, even as she got into bed and stared at the ceiling, _it_ was still there, whatever it was, sitting perfectly unwell.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

"He's been very good to me."

Matt practically gawped at her. "Damon?"

She couldn't help the smile that pulled at her lips. "Yeah," she nodded, looking wistfully at the little bonsai tree on his desk. "He visited me as much as he could when I was in the medical wing to keep me company, and now I've been back a couple of days he's always making sure I'm okay and have what I need, it- it's really sweet, although he can be slightly overbearing, but it's nice to know he really cares about me."

Matt didn't seem to think so, however, as although he nodded at her and shot her a grin, it fell off his face as fast as it appeared and he quickly scribbled something down on the notepad in front of him. Elena knew better than to ask what it was.

"Caroline and Bonnie of course were there a lot as well," she added, feeling a warmth in her chest as she thought of all the times they sat at her side and read her books or painted her nails or just talked to her like she was a normal human being and not some fragile thing. "Another doctor visited me a few times as well, uh… the blonde one. Doctor Malfoy? Mayfield? My-"

"-Maxfield," Matt supplied, inwardly cringing at the thought of his superior thinking it was necessary to visit his own patient.

Elena snapped her fingers and nodded. "Yes, Doctor Maxfield. He seemed friendly enough, I guess, although he asked a lot of questions about where I've been institutionalized in the past." she paused, her mind flashing back to his almost tight smile and bright wide eyes. "I know he's a psychiatrist so that's his job, but it still seemed like _a lot_."

Matt nodded, not writing anything down. "Was there anyone else who came to see you?"

She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "Uh, yeah, Alaric did. Only a couple of times, but he's very busy with his job and everything so…" her words trailed off into nothing, thinking of the man who was like a second father to her. Half the time she didn't even know why he stuck around; Jenna had died years ago, he'd only come into her life a year or two after her parent's deaths when she was a teenager, she and Jeremy were both fully grown, and they weren't _blood_. And yet, he was always there, unwavering. "He came as often as he could, I know."

And Matt hummed as he noted unknown words down, then looking back up at her, lips together and eyes gentle. She stared back, knowing what his trick was, knowing he'd stay silent and watch her and wait for her to continue on. But knowing the trick didn't mean much, because she fell for it every time.

"And Jeremy only visited that one time."

Matt was quiet.

"Well, he did call, uh, once, to see how I was. Which was nice. He… he goes to college a state over so I- even though it's only an hours drive, I get that it's hard for him to come here… Even if he wanted to."

Looking at her sympathetically, Matt leaned forward. "What do you mean by, 'even if he wanted to'?"

She inhaled a thick breath. "Well, I told you what he said to me during the first visit and, well, I guess he doesn't really forgive me for… for a lot of what's happened. So he probably doesn't want to see me. But even if he did, it'd still be hard for him to come all the way out here." There was a wobble in her voice and tears stung her eyes.

Guilt piled up at the pit of her stomach every time she thought of his face. Even though so many people, Alaric and Damon and Bonnie and Caroline and Matt, had told her that it _wasn't her fault_ , even though deep down even she knew it, nothing anyone said could stop the guilt she felt from festering inside. She had corrupted her little brother, the brother she was supposed to protect and keep safe from harm, when in reality _she_ was the harm.

"I'm just worried that he's never going to forgive me."

"It takes time," Matt responded, his voice gentle but firm. "Healing takes time. There's nothing that you can do but continue on improving and give him time."

She reached forward and tore a tissue out from the box on his desk to wipe away the tears that spilt across her cheeks. "But," her voice was hoarse and her heart aching, "what if that's not enough? What if he never forgives me? I want a relationship with him; I want to be a sister to him, but what if we can never have that? What can I do?"

Tilting his head slightly to the side, Matt regarded her, and let out a small sigh. "It's impossible to control all things in life, especially something as delicate as other people's feelings. You've made mistakes, like all people, but you're getting better, _that_ you can control. However, you can't force your brother to come around and want a relationship with you. If time isn't enough to let him heal and want a relationship with you, then you can't let it hold you back. You would just have to push forward."

Her earliest memory of Jeremy was when he was a baby and she only three years old. Elena had snuck into his room after her parents had laid him down for a nap. She remembered sticking her face through the bars of the crib and marveling at how small he was, how his soft lips hung open as he slept and the little gentle snores that left his mouth. She remembered the brown fuzz of his hair on his head and the blue-checkered pattern of his onesie. She remembered stretching her hand out and poking her finger through one of his fists and how _tight_ he held onto her. She remembered staying like that until her parents came in.

The memory made her heart ache. All she wanted was to go back and take that baby and hold him and tell him how much she loved him and how she wanted to do better. But she couldn't. He wasn't that baby anymore, and going back was impossible.

"I love him _so_ much and I don't want to just- just _cut_ him off." The idea of not trying whatever she could to keep her hold on Jeremy was _awful_. "I need him in my life, he's my brother, my blood, and- and blood is thicker than water."

But Matt gave her a simple smile at this. "You know, some people argue that that proverb is a shortened version of another phrase."

But Elena's thoughts and memories were racing in her head and she could only manage a distracted "what?" at Matt's weirdly ambiguous statement.

"The original version of that phrase was supposedly 'the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb'."

Elena's mind halted. She furrowed her brows, sniffed. "What does that even mean?"

"Basically, that the bonds we make with others during our struggles are stronger than simple family ties."

She didn't respond, instead, knotted her fingers together and stared at the lamp, mulling over his words, or at least, trying to, as they were largely at conflict with other values she steadfastly held.

"Elena," Matt sighed, scratching his head and shifting slightly, wincing at the loud creak his chair made, "I'm not trying to tell you what to do, that is your choice and your complete control. But family is not always absolute, and it doesn't have to just be those who have the same blood as you. Alaric seems to consider you family, even though, as you said, you don't share blood. It's great that you want to work at your relationship with your- with Jeremy, but you can't let it devastate you either. Sometimes it's _okay_ to give up."

And it was true. It really was.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Hayley clutched the phone to her ear, twisting the short chord around her fingers, leaning close to the wall, her heart leaping up into her throat as she listened to him speak on the other end of the line.

"I'm doing so much better than before, Hayley. I…" his voice trailed off and she could hear him let out a thick, heavy breath. "I only wish I could help you."

She shrugged even though he couldn't see it. "I've only got a little more than three months left. I'll manage." her voice was disinterested but really the thought of spending another second in that place caused her stomach to thrash and bile to rise up her throat. He was silent on the other end. "There's nothing you can or could do, Tyler, so don't bother worrying yourself about it."

"I can't help it. Even though most of the people there were pieces of shit, they all need help and that place isn't doing anything, no matter how well intentioned Matt is. There's other stuff going on there, there's…"

Hayley rolled her eyes as Tyler went off into a tirade about how evil the Augustine Center was, but she didn't say anything. As much as she didn't like the place, and as much as she thought it was unethical and unregulated, and as much as she didn't trust anyone there, she _didn't_ believe there was an underground network of human experimentation and trafficking being conducted there, but maybe that was because she wasn't being shoveled full of medication like Tyler was to calm down his anger. His head obviously wasn't in the right place just yet, maybe he was even bored and entertaining himself with conspiracy theories about a random psychiatric institution in Virginia was what he did for fun. She didn't really care what he thought or felt, she  only hated the place because she didn't belong there, because she couldn't trust anyone there because they wouldn't trust her, because she didn't think the people working there were fully qualified for what was being done, and because there were people like Kai and Katherine getting up to insidious stuff. It made her uneasy, yet all she could do was just keep her head down and push forwards.

"I only wish that everyone could be transferred here."

"Well we can't all be trust fund babies with parents that actually care about us like you, Tyler." she retorted tartly, meaner than she had intended but she couldn't help it. There was an awkward quiet for a long moment, and then she said, "whatever. I already said don't worry about us here. Just focus on getting better."

"I wish I could do something to get the place shut down," he said, voice dismayed, and Hayley had to stop herself from slamming the phone shut in the face of another one of his rants about the center. "But my hands are tied."

She rubbed at her nose. "Yep", she said quickly, suddenly wanting out of the conversation.

Hayley could feel the hesitation on the other side of the phone, and just as she was about to bite out a " _what_?", he spoke; "is there anything I can do? That I… I feel guilty about managing to get out while you can't. Is there anything I can get done for you?"

Running a hand through her hair Hayley couldn't help but let out a humorless laugh as she began to respond with a "N-", however she found herself choking on the word because although Tyler could do nothing for _her_ , there was someone else she had in mind who would need help. And at that trigger thought the words tumbled out of her lips. "My daughter Hope, she- she's only a baby, barely even a year old and she's out there," her voice cracked and tears stung her eyes. "She's out there in the foster system by herself and her father is dead and- and I can't help her. _Tyler_ ," he was dead silent on the other end, and his name was a plea. "Please find her so we can be together again once I'm finally out of here, _please Tyler_ , there's nothing you can do for me but please, find my baby, please find her. Her name is Hope. I- I don't know if her last name will be Marshall or Kenner or both or even Webber, the name of my foster family when I gave birth to her in- in Philadelphia, or maybe it's completely different, I don't know, but please, _please_ find her."

When she was done talking, she found a few tears had escaped and fallen down her cheeks. Hayley waited in anticipation for what seemed forever but was probably only a few seconds until Tyler said, "I will do everything I can to find her, Hayley, I promise, okay."

"Okay," her voice sounded more hoarse than she would've liked.

"Okay. I'm sorry, I have to go now, but I'll call as soon as I know anything." she nodded even though he couldn't see. "Take care Hayley, and don't do anything that may catch the attention of any higher ups or get you into Ward D, otherwise you'll never get out."

She swallowed. "Thank you," it sounded foreign in her mouth, not uncomfortable but just strange, mainly because she'd never really had anything to be thankful for before in her life.

"No, I'm sorry you're there, Hayley. I really have to go, but good luck."

The phone went dead before she would murmur out a "bye".

Slowly, Hayley hooked the phone back and let out a long breath, wiping away the tears. Although she tried to suppress it, tried to convince herself there was no point in it and that she'd only ever be disappointed in the end, some sick sort of hope blossomed in the pit of her stomach and she could feel her heart flutter in her chest at the idea of having her baby back.

" _Please_ I just want to speak to her!"

The cry caught Hayley's attention and she glanced to the side, finding it came from Rebekah, a few phones away, who had Kol standing closely behind her, an intent look on his face while his sister looked completely bedraggled.

"Finn you have no right to-" Hayley was rooted to her spot as she stared in some sort of voyeuristic fascination at Rebekah who openly sobbed into the receiver. "Stop saying that! They must- mum must at least _wonder_ how I- we are! She must!"

After an extended moment, Rebekah jerked the phone away from her face, stared at it for a second, and slammed it down. Oddly, Hayley felt bad for eavesdropping on the scene, but she found she could hardly move. Shrinking back against the wall, she licked the dried tears from her lips, and watched the scene, peering out from behind the partition.

Rebekah turned to Kol, who looked down at her gravely. Hayley heard her let out a shuddering breath, and straining her ears, listened as Rebekah spoke, "I miss it. Kol, I miss home. I miss my room and the food and the beach I- even though they never let me go out anywhere it was a better prison than here." Kol wrapped an arm around his sister and brought her to his chest, and Hayley could only feel her discomfort grow as she watched the strangely tender moment between the two siblings who never seemed to do anything but argue. "I miss them, mum and dad," Rebekah's voice was muffled. "Even though I hate them I miss them."

"I know, Rebekah, I know," Kol's voice was soft but heavy, and Hayley felt something knot in her stomach at the mere concept of having parents that you hate. Hayley never knew her mom and dad, but she'd painted an image of them in her head, of her mother as a maternal, gentle brunette with shoulder length hair and the kind of voice that could lull anyone to sleep, and of her father, a green-eyed approachable joker with the kind of smile that could light up a room. It was more probable that her mom had been a sixteen year old who couldn't handle the responsibility of a child, it was more probable that her dad was some frat boy who ran the minute he heard of the pregnancy, it was more probable that her parents were both heroin junkies who dropped her off in a trashcan, or maybe they were even dead.

Hayley didn't know, and she probably never would, and it was bliss and hell at the same time. Not knowing meant that they could be anyone she liked, but it also meant she missed two people she never even knew. But as Hayley watched Kol hug Rebekah as she cried over parents who had done whatever the hell they had done to her to make her hate them, she was thankful she didn't know who her parents were, or what they were, or why they gave her away, or where they were, or if they were even still alive.

Hayley wondered what Hope would think of her and her father if she never got her back. She wondered if Hope would create images of her and Jackson in her mind like Hayley did with her parents. Thinking of it made Hayley feel sick.

Kol closed his eyes and Hayley saw tears plod down his cheek, but he was silent. Feeling guiltier by the second at what she was witnessing, Hayley took the opportunity to leave the room before they could catch her.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Since Caroline's relapse was only a one-time thing, she had decided that there was no point in telling anyone about it. There was no point causing unnecessary worry for a problem that she was fixing. Instead, she spent most of her time trying to forget it, because if she could do that, then it didn't really matter that it happened at all, did it?

Normally when Caroline was trying to keep her mind off something, she'd do a make over and paint her nails. However the nurses had confiscated her nail varnish because they thought she might've tried sniffing the fumes to get high, yet in the same sentence they told her she could keep the remover. Caroline often wondered where the hell they got their medical degree, but assented.

Instead, reading was helping her. Normally Caroline only interested herself in reading magazines and make-up catalogues (she may not have been able to buy anything in them but she could dream), however Bonnie recently let her borrow one of her favorite novels, 'Catch-22'. It was really fucking weird and kind of confusing and some of it went way over her head, but she was enjoying it any way. Her favorite character _had_ to be Major Major Major Major purely because of how brilliant his name was.

She liked to read in the garden, feel the grass tickle her skin and sun kiss her face and fresh air in her lungs, all of that crap. Outside was a nice change from the subtle oppression of the institution, all the sick, sad people in there and the stuffy space and clinical _everything_. They had been doing renovations, on a lower floor, but she could still smell the drying paint that crashed up her nostrils and hear the hammering that thrashed at her head.

Caroline was often alone when she read. Not that she minded, of course, because being around others just distracted her, and the whole point of reading _was_ the escapism it offered her. Or at least, that was what Matt had said when she told him she'd started reading a book.

"Insanity is contagious."

Looking up into the glare of the sun, Caroline found Klaus standing nearby. "What?" she asked him.

He sat down beside her on the grass, the crooks of his elbows rested on his knees, and nodded towards to book in her hands. "'Catch-22', it's a quote."

" _Oh_ ," she drawled, glancing down at the pages, and then back to him, her eyes squinted and a chuckle escaping her throat. "You're _so_ pretentious, Klaus."

But Klaus didn't take any offense, and instead, while regarding her with his head titled slightly, he grinned. He paused like this for a moment, and then spoke. "You're probably right. I will only admit this to you, but I didn't have many friends in high school, I didn't… Well, I used to read a lot during that time, and I actually went through a phase where I would only speak in quotes from books. While most people were having their emo or rebel stage, I was… doing _that_."

And Caroline laughed loudly at this along with Klaus, knocking him with her shoulder lightly.

"Although it was only a short lived phase, because-" he cut himself off, suddenly straightening, suddenly clearing his throat, "well, that doesn't matter." And his instant change in composure took Caroline off foot, causing her to lean back and take a better look, noticing the tension in his muscles, the distance in his stare. Something heavy weighed down in her stomach because of it, but she didn't quite know _why_ , just that she didn't feel right.

Before she could stop herself, her hand was on his shoulder and her face near his and her eyes studying him intently. "You can talk to me, if you want, Klaus, you know…"

There was a tick in his jaw, and he met her stare, half hesitant half wanting. He opened his mouth, was tentative and still uncertain, and then a moment later, just as sudden as before, he closed him mouth, looked away, and shut down. "I know," and there was a beat and he looked at her again, "you can too, Caroline."

She hummed in response, just as open to the idea as he seemingly was. Then a sudden thought struck her mind and she couldn't help the laugh that escaped her lips, quickly slapping her hand over her mouth. But Klaus had heard it, and he gave her a look that was both inquisitive and accusing. She just shook her head. "Sorry it's just… It's a bit ridiculous, isn't it? Us telling each other we can talk to each other when we're in a place that is literally full of mental health professionals who are there for that exact purpose?"

Klaus, however, frowned and looked away, hunching his shoulders slightly as he picked at the grass. "I don't like Matt and his stupid clipboard and his bloody open-ended questions and long pauses," he muttered sullenly and Caroline let out another bark of laughter.

" _Yes_!" he gave her a startled glance as she slapped down on her knees. "You have no idea what he's writing down there! And his office always smells like mint, it gives me headaches!"

Throwing his hands up in the air, his expression became exasperated. "That damn humidifier! _God_ do I detest it. I leave his office every time smelling like _toothpaste_."

"And the mood lighting in there makes me feel like I'm in a really, really shitty nightclub!"

"Those hideous green paintings on the wall are offensive to art! I could paint something better than those in five minutes!"

"Why are the walls so _orange_? It's like they were colored in with a highlighter!"

"Sitting in that chair is giving me worse back problems than when my father used to-"

Klaus' voice caught in his throat, just as abrupt as before, and he suddenly turned away from Caroline, whose face had inched dangerously close to his while they were bonding over their hate. Caroline felt as though the wind was knocked out of her chest, and felt bile burn the back of her throat. She looked at Klaus, who stared straight ahead as his fingers picked at a loose thread at the end of his sleeve, and wondered what he would've said next, although it didn't take much for her to guess the implications. And she turned away and stared ahead like him.

They sat like that for a bit, and Caroline watched as nurses walked by and other patients sat down on the grass and as birds flew across the sky. He stayed still, and she felt a certain tension between them grow, and while it wasn't like it was uncomfortable, Caroline didn't like it. Klaus could've left, he didn't, and that told her more than it didn't.

"I was fifteen when I first became bulimic."

He didn't look at her, and Caroline found it easier to not look at him, either.

"I was so stupid but I was so sick. I thought I was-" she broke off, twisted her head to the side and clicked her tongue. "I thought I was so fat and hideous, and I wanted to lose weight because I thought it… it would make me better. I wanted to lose weight quickly, and- and the binging and the purging was just… _so easy_."

She let out a heavy breath, watching a brown flicker launch itself into the sky.

"Of course I lost the weight but I couldn't _stop_. I couldn't, I couldn't, I… every time I ate, I ate as much as I could because I was so hungry, but then afterwards I felt so guilty I felt physically ill and… I'd just puke it all up." she blinked and found that her vision was becoming blurry, and she looked down at her hands and found that they were shaking. "I was so- _so_ stupid. I wish I'd never done it but even if I could do it all over I know I'd start again because I was sick, and I still am, I still-"

His hand found hers, and he laced his fingers through hers, and he held on tight. Klaus still didn't look at her, and she appreciated it more than he probably could've known.

"I was in and out of institutions for a while but I just kept on relapsing and it- it just broke my mom _every time_... I couldn't- can't help it but she doesn't deserve what I put her through, she doesn't-" he squeezed her hand, and though no words left hos mouth she knew what he was trying to say. "I try to be okay, for her and- and myself, I try to be happy, because, you know, 'fake it till you make it'," she let out a humorless laugh. "What a joke… But I try, I'm trying."

Caroline said no more, she couldn't push any more words past her lips and she didn't even know if it would've been healthy for her to do so. She could only say so much at once, _it was so exhausting_.

Again, they sat like that for a bit, this time, though, holding hands, and Caroline wiped the tears from her face and sniffled, and normally she would've been embarrassed for crying in front of someone, but she found she wasn't, not this time.

"Mikael- my father, always said I was too soft. He had his criticisms for all my siblings, of course, Elijah was too undisciplined, Finn too morally good, Rebekah too vain, Kol too arrogant, and I was too soft and weak. He would… try what he could to get rid of these 'deficiencies' in our personalities." he clenched his jaw and his lips took a bitter turn. "Most of the time it was psychological, such as making me sleep on the floor instead of my bed to 'thicken my skin'. But there would be occasions when he'd… he'd get physical. And…I'd cry and tell him to stop, naturally, because I was a child. I- I used to be scared he'd kill me at some point."

His voice was dull Caroline clamped down on her lip to stop more tears from falling on her cheeks; it wasn't her story to cry about, and she instead resorted to to tightening her grip on his hand.

"Sometimes Rebekah would try to intervene or would get my mother and tell her that Mikael would kill me but… But Mikael would just say 'Stopp Rebekah, alt lyt øydast som er etla til det'." he let out a breath and she could see him swallow a couple of times. "Which means 'everything must be destroyed which is meant to be'… so if he killed me, it was meant to be."

That was when she saw a tear fall from his eye, but Klaus didn't even seem to realize.

"Mikael rarely laid a hand on my other siblings, never on my mother. I was the main one. I did find thankful sanctuary in boarding school in England for many years, like Finn and Kol and Rebekah, but eventually came back for high school… Soon enough I discovered that- that I'm not even his son and he killed my _real_ father in Norway before he and my mother immigrated here, and… things made a bit more sense."

If hearing about the abuse hadn't already done it, Caroline was immensely disturbed. His voice was so cold, so numb, so devoid of emotion, and yet she could see how much it hurt him.

"Mikael's… he's not my real father but he's my only father. I think he… cares about me in his own way."

And he looked at her, his eyes showing a mix of shame and embarrassment and tentativeness, his hair glinting gold in the sunlight. Caroline nodded, filled the space between them as she shuffled close to him. She let out a breath, he still watched her, and she started, "Klaus… I'm sorr-"

"-Don't." he cut through quickly, sharply, but not unkindly. "I don't need your sorrys or your pity, Caroline, just like you don't need mine. Okay?"

And Caroline nodded again, feeling a watery smile pull at her lips. "Okay."

He must've been tense before, because she could see him visibly relax at her confirmation. They looked at each other for a moment longer, both deciding that they were okay with what they'd said, that it was enough for now, and maybe had it lasted a moment or two longer, their stares would have fallen to each others lips, and maybe something more would have happened, but it was enough for now. Caroline turned to stare ahead, the book in her lap, with its tales of insanity and war and death, completely forgotten.

In the next second, barely thinking, she rested her head on Klaus' shoulder, but he didn't tense, didn't stiffen, didn't run, and instead, he just rested his head upon hers, and it was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, that Caroline section went through half a dozen re-writes... I just couldn't get it right. So I moved on, wrote the Hayley bit in a day and a half, then went back to the Caroline section and got it just the way I wanted in a day. Writing really can be a pain in the ass when you know what you want but just can't seem to get it that way.
> 
> Also, to any people who know Norwegian I'm terribly sorry if I butchered it or the translation for that phrase was a bit off. I did as much research as I could and stayed as far away from the heinous service that is Google translate as possible.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Please leave a comment if you have the time! And because the next chapter probably won't be out before the New Year, happy holidays to everyone! Thank you for reading! X
> 
>  
> 
> **Next Chapter (so far) - You see Katherine's point of view during a group therapy session, and Stefan has an interesting time in the shower.**


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